"  "1" '■"  ,,0  I, 

1  1  '  1  l' 

UC-NRLF 


B   ^   1H7   3bD 


GIFT   OF  , 


THE   WORLD    BEAUTIFUL. 


By  the  Same  Author: 

The  World    Beautiful. 

Scconti  S'crirs. 
l6mo.    Cloth.     $1.00. 

White  and  Gold.    $1.25. 


From  Dreamland  Sent. 

l6mo.     Cloth.    $1.25. 


Roberts    Brothers,  Boston. 


THE 


World  Beautiful. 


BY 


LILIAN    WHITING. 


*Tis  heaven  alone  that  Is  given  away; 
'T  IS  ouiy  God  may  be  had  for  the  asking. 

Lowell 


BOSTON: 

ROBERTS     BROTHERS. 

1897. 


EDUC. 

PSYCH. 

LIBRARY 


Copyright,  ISO^, 
By  Roberts  Brothers. 


Cs^  <^  "i-  >  YXN .  VU  ^^^ 


John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  U  S.  A. 


TO 

Z\]t  Mtmors,  anU  tf)e  15i)er4iijm3  33tesntce 

OF 

PHILLIPS    BROOKS, 

Bishop  of  3Iassachusetis, 

AND   "THE   FRIEND   AND   AIDER   OF   ALL   WHO  WOULD 
LIVE    IN    THE    SPIRIT," 

These  papers  are  reverently  inscribed  hy 

LILIAN   WHITING. 


383310 


COIN'TENTS. 


W^t  raorltJ  Beautiful. 

Page 

The  Duty  of  Happiness 11 

Nectar  and  Ambrosia 13 

Believe  in  the  Wings 21 

The  Vision  and  the  Splendor 26 

Jtientisfjip. 

The  Enlargement  op  Relations   ....  39 

Friends  Discovered,  not  Made      ....  47 

A  Psychological  Problem 57 

The  Supreme  Luxury  of  Life 64 

(©ur  Social  ^albation. 

^Exclusiveness  and  Inclusiveness      ...  75 

Through  Scorning  Nothing 86 

The  Woman  of  the  World 90 

The  Potency  of  Charm 93 

>  Fine  Souls  and  Fine  Society 97 


yiii  Contents. 

ilottis-'iSating. 

Page 

Vice  and  Advice Ill 

One's  Own  AVay 116 

Writing  in  Sympathetic  Ink 120 

Success  as  a  Fine  Art 125 

A  Common  Experience 132 

STJat  infji'd)  is  to  Come. 

Intimations  and  Promptings 145 

Through  Struggle  to  Achievement    .    .  149 

A  Question  of  the  Day 159 

The  Law  of  Overcoming 165 

In  Newness  of  Life 171 

The  Heavenly  Vision 185 


THE    WORLD    BEAUTIFUL. 


The  Fairest  enchants  me, 
The  Mighty  commands  me, 
Saying,  '^  Stand  in  thy  place 
Up  and  Eastward  turn  thy  Face, 
So  thou  attend  the  enriching  fate 
Which  none  can  stay,  and  none  accelerate." 

Emerson. 


THE  WORLD  BEAUTIFUL. 


THE  DUTY  OF  HAPPINESS. 


^FTER  all,  it  rests  with  ourselves  as 
to  whether  we  shall  live  in  a  World 
Beautiful.  It  depends  little  on  ex- 
ternal scenery,  little  on  those  circumstances 
outside  our  personal  control.  Like  the 
kingdom  of  heaven,  it  is  not  a  locality,  but 
a  condition.  It  is  a  spiritual  state,  and  de- 
pends on  our  degree  of  receptivity  to  the 
influence  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  We  have  all 
of  us  met  persons  whose  very  presence  is  a 
benediction ;  who  harmonize  and  tranquillize 
those  about  them,  and  with  whom  we  feel  on 
a  higher  and  serener  plane.  The  world  is  dis- 
tinctively the  better  for  these  benignant  spir- 
its ;  but  such  lives  are  not  only  to  be  enjoyed, 


1*2  The  Ti 01  hi  Beautiful. 

not  only  to  be  recognized   and  appreciated, 
but  to  be  lived  as  well.     As  the  poet  has  it : 

'*  Be  thou  the  true  man  thou  dost  seek !  ^ 

If  one  admires  tlie  patience,  gentleness, 
sweetness,  and  unfailing  energy  of  another; 
if  he  finds  himself  renewed  and  invigorated 
and  inspired  by  such  contact,  —  why  does  he 
not  himself  so  live  that  he  may  bring  the 
same  renewal  and  inspiration  to  others  ?  The 
responsibility  is  on  each  and  all  of  us  to  live 
on  the  ideal  plane ;  to  realize  in  outward 
action,  in  every  deed  and  word,  those  quali- 
ties which  we  recognize  as  pertaining  to  the 
higher  life.  For  it  is  these  that  produce  the 
spiritual.  And  to  live  this  higher  life  is  to 
live  in  happiness,  even  in  holiness.  It  is 
the  life  of  peace  and  love  and  joy ;  it  is  the 
life  of  larger  sympathies,  and,  as  a  result,  of 
larGjer  interests.  The  more  liberal  the  svm- 
pathy,  the  more  is  tlie  interest  of  life  ex- 
tended ;  and  the  more  extended  one's  range 
of  interests,  the  more  does  one  multiply  the 
means  and  resources  of  happiness. 


The  Duty  of  Happiness.  13 

There  has  been  of  late  a  new  form  of  phil- 
anthropic work  which  is  known  by  the  gen- 
eral name  of  "college  settlements."  It  is 
simply  for  one  individual,  or  several,  to  go 
into  the  poorer  quarters  of  a  city  and  live 
as  a  neighbor  to  the  ignorant,  the  defective, 
the  very  poor,  or  the  degraded.  It  is  less  a 
mission  than  it  is  a  ministiy,  —  the  natural 
and  informal  ministry  of  right-doing.  It  is 
to  found  a  home  which  shall  be  a  stand- 
ing object-lesson  in  better  ways  of  living ; 
which  shall  illustrate  the  beauty  of  order, 
of  cleanliness,  of  gentle  ways,  of  generous 
thoughtfulness,  of  friendly  sympathy.  The 
men  and  women  who  are  doing  this  do  not 
keep  a  house  of  correction,  or  a  house  of 
refuge,  or  an  asylum  of  any  kind.  They 
keep  a  home.  They  do  not  go  out  into 
the  highways  and  the  byways  to  preach  or 
to  teach,  ostensibly,  but  they  endeavor  so  to 
order  their  lives  as  to  give  constantly  the 
indirect  teaching  of  example.  Perhaps  it  is 
no  exaggeration  to  say  that  to  a  greater  or 
less  degree  they  show  forth  the  beauty  of  holi- 


14  The  World  Beautiful 

ncss.  There  is  a  twofold  blessing  in  such  liv- 
ing as  this,  —  it  blesses  him  who  gives  and 
him  who  takes,  —  and  perhaps  of  all  forms  of 
humanitarian  work  it  is  the  one  best  calcu- 
lated to  effect  good  results. 

But  if  the  larger  number  of  people  wait  to 
make  some  specific  change  in  life  before  en- 
deavoring to  realize  their  higher  ideals  in  con- 
duct, if  a  change  of  location  and  general 
rearrangement  and  readjustment  of  method 
and  detail  must  precede  tlie  better  living, 
then  will  it  be  more  than  likely  to  be  inde- 
finitely postponed. 

Why,  indeed,  should  not  the  principle  of 
the  college  settlement  be  carried  into  living 
under  the  usual  surroundings  ?  Why  not  fill 
one's  usual  place  in  life,  do  one's  usual  work, 
—  meet  the  customary  duties,  pleasures,  cour- 
tesies, only  meeting  them  from  new  motives, 
and  inspiring  the  duties  with  higher  purposes  ? 
It  is  not  only  the  poor,  the  ignorant,  or  even 
the  degraded,  who  need  to  have  good  done 
them ;  who  need  the  sunniness  of  hope,  the 
sweetness  of  content,  the  renewal  of  courage, 


The  Duty  of  Happiness.  15 

the  unfaltering  devotion  to  heroism.  People 
are  not  necessarily  rich  in  happiness  or  in 
hope,  because  they  live  in  more  or  less  luxury 
of  the  material  comforts  and  privileges  of  life. 
There  is  just  as  much  need  of  the  ministry  of 
higher  ideals  to  the  comfortable  as  to  the  un- 
comfortable, to  the  intelligent  as  to  the  igno- 
rant, to  those  who  are  reaching  forward  after 
truth  and  progress  as  to  those  who  are  reced- 
ing from  them.  There  is  a  vast  amount  of 
enthusiasm  in  the  world  over  helping  the  un- 
fortunate and  defective  and  degraded  classes, 
and  so  far  as  this  zeal  is  genuine  and  discreet, 
it  is  to  be  commended ;  but  the  righteous  as 
well  as  the  sinner,  the  moral  as  well  as  the 
immoral,  the  refined  as  well  as  the  rude,  are 
not  altogether  unworthy  some  degree  of  both 
private  and  public  consideration. 

Unfailing  though tfulness  of  others  in  all 
those  trifles  that  make  up  daily  contact  in 
daily  life,  sweetness  of  spirit,  the  exhilaration 
of  gladness  and  of  joy,  and  that  exaltation  of 
feeling  which  is  the  inevitable  result  of  mental 
peace  and  loving  thought,  —  these  make  up 


16  The  World  Beautiful. 

the  World  Beautiful,  in  which  eaeh  one  may 
live  as  in  an  atmosphere  always  attending  his 
presence. 

Like  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  the  World 
Beautiful  is  within  ;  and  it  is  not  only  a  privi- 
lege, but  an  absolute  duty,  so  to  live  that  we 
are  always  in  its  atmosphere.  Happiness,  like 
health,  is  the  normal  state ;  and  when  this  is 
not  felt,  the  cause  should  be  looked  for,  just 
as  in  illness  the  causes  should  be  scrutinized 
and  removed. 

Live  in  the  sweet,  sunny  atmosphere  of 
serenity  and  light  and  exaltation,  —  in  that 
love  and  loveliness  that  creates  the  World 
Beautiful. 


Nectar  Nectar  and  ambrosia  should  not 
and       be  regarded  as  refreshment  sacred 

"^  ^°  ^  ■  only  to  festive  occasions,  but  as 
human  nature's  daily  food.  It  is  the  natural 
sustenance  of  life,  not  a  luxury  for  an  occa- 
sional holiday.  It  is  the  initial  business  and 
purpose  of  life  to  be  happy  ;  and,  lest  the  mor- 


Nectar  and  Ambrosia.  17 

alist  should  object  to  this  as  a  frivolous  propo- 
sition, it  may  be  added  that  it  is  that  true 
happiness  synonymous  with  holiness  which  is 
meant,  —  the  quality  of  happiness  that  mani- 
fests itself  in  abounding  energy  and  good-will^ 
that  radiates  exhilaration  and  enthusiasm. 
This  state  should  be  regarded  as  the  normal 
condition  of  life ;  and  when  one  is  below  it, 
he  should  inquire  into  the  reason,  and  see  if 
it  is  not  a  result  of  causes  which  can  be  re- 
moved or  changed.  No  one  has  any  more 
right  to  go  about  unhappy  than  he  has  to  go 
about  ill-bred.  He  owes  it  to  himself,  to  his 
friends,  to  society  and  the  community  in  gen- 
eral, to  live  up  to  his  best  spiritual  possibili- 
ties, not  only  now  and  then,  once  or  twice  a 
year,  or  once  in  a  season,  but  every  day  and 
every  hour.  The  aim  of  spiritual  perfection 
is  one  that  should  never  be  lost  from  view. 

For  this  state  of  positive  exhilaration  and 
enjoyment  whose  results  are  abounding  energy 
and  radiant  good-will,  no  price  is  too  great  to 
pay.  Emerson  truly  says  that  life  is  an  ec- 
stasy, and  nothing  less  is  really  living.    And  to 

2 


18  The  World  Beauti/ul. 

achieve  this  state  requires  new  elements  all 
the  time.  It  may  not  always  require  change 
of  location  ;  material  change  is  of  little  impor- 
tance compared  to  that  mental  variety  which 
is  the  secret  of  advancing  life.  To  lay  hold 
on  new  ideas,  to  climb  to  new  spiritual 
heights,  is  the  change  which  is  growth  and 
development,  and  which  brings  one  into  touch 
with  new  atmospheres. 

To  go  about  moping,  depressed,  blue,  out 
of  spirits  in  general,  is  to  exist  but  not  to  live. 
It  is  the  condition  of  a  mollusk  and  unworthy 
a  human  being.  Worry  is  a  state  of  spiritual 
corrosion.  A  trouble  either  can  be  remedied, 
or  it  cannot.  If  it  can  be,  then  set  about  it ; 
if  it  cannot  be,  dismiss  it  from  consciousness, 
or  bear  it  so  bravely  that  it  may  become 
transfigured  to  a  blessing. 

A  great  deal  of  life  is  lost  in  getting  ready, 
as  is  commonly  believed,  to  live.  To  scorn 
delights  and  live  laborious  days ;  to  bind  one's 
self  to  an  unceasing  and  unchanging  routine, 
as  Ixion  to  his  wheel,  for  the  sake  of  amassing 
money  that  some  time,  in  a  dim  and  abstract 


Nectar  and  Ambrosia,  19 

future,  one  may  begin  to  live,  —  is  simply  to 
attempt  building  a  superstructure  without  a 
foundation.  Life  stretches  on  like  an  endless 
chain,  whose  initial  links  we  know  not,  nor 
yet  those  to  come.  But  that  we  are  each  day 
the  sum  of  all  that  we  ever  have  been  is  a 
truth  as  undeniable  as  any  of  exact  mathema- 
tics. We  cannot  skip  a  single  link.  One  act, 
one  mood,  predetermines  another. 

*'  Man  is  his  own  star ;  and  the  soul  that  can 
Render  an  honest  and  a  perfect  man, 
Commands  all  light,  all  influence,  all  fate  ; 
Nothing  to  him  falls  early  or  too  late. 
Our  acts  our  angels  are,  or  good  or  ill, 
Our  fatal  shadows  that  walk  by  us  still."  ^ 

Now,  happiness  produces  happiness.  En- 
joyment may  be  cultivated,  and  is,  after  all, 
largely  a  condition  of  habit.  Precisely  the 
same  circumstances  will  yield  delight  to  one 
and  discontent  to  another,  and  no  process  of 
culture  is  so  admirable  as  that  w^hich  fosters 
the  habitual  mood  of  sunny  enjoyment. 

No  price  is  too  great  to  pay  for  the  mood 
of  inspiration.     Draw  out  the  money  in  the 

1  Epilogue  to  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  Honest  Man's  Fortunes. 


20  The  World  Beautiful. 

bank,  if  need  be,  and  invest  it  in  travel, 
change,  books,  social  life  ;  so  shall  its  value 
return  to  you  a  thousandfold. 

It  will  yield  an  interest  on  a  richer  invest- 
ment than  that  of  bank  accounts ;  and  not  only 
interest,  but  interest  compounded  innumerable 
times  and  at  an  accelerated  ratio.  Acquire 
the  habit  of  expecting  success,  of  believing  in 
happiness.  Nothing  succeeds  like  success ; 
nothing  makes  happiness  like  happiness. 

"  The  aim  —  at  least  in  this  way  alone  can 
I  look  at  human  life  —  is  not  to  make  rich 
and  successful,  but  noble  and  enlightened 
men,"  says  Bishop  Spaulding.  "  Hence  the 
final  thought  in  all  work  is  that  we  work  not 
to  have  more,  but  to  be  more  ;  not  for  higher 
place,  but  for  greater  worth ;  not  for  fame, 
but  for  knowledge.  In  a  word,  the  final 
thought  is  that  we  labor  to  upbuild  the  being 
which  we  are,  and  not  merely  to  build  round 
our  real  self  with  marble  and  gold  and  pre- 
cious stones.  This  is  but  the  Christian  teach- 
ing whicli  has  transformed  tlie  world.  The 
end  is  infinite,  the  aim  must  be  the  highest. 


Believe  in  the  Wings.  21 

Not  to  know  this,  not  to  hear  the  heavenly 
invitation,  is  to  be  shut  off  from  communion 
with  the  best,  is  to  be  cut  off  from  the  source 
of  growth,  is  to  be  given  over  to  modes  of 
thought  which  fatally  lead  to  mediocrity  and 
vulgarity  of  life." 

This  plane  of  living  is  that  on  which  alone 
true  work  is  done. 

And  the  nectar  and  ambrosia  are  offered  us 
daily.  We  have  only  to  recognize  and  receive. 
Life  is  the  result  of  a  process  of  selection ;  and 
he  only  is  the  true  artist  who  chooses  the  finer 
elements  and  out  of  them  creates  his  World 
Beautiful. 

Believe         "  ]\Jy  brother  Charles,  among  the 
m  the      difficulties   of  our   early   ministry, 

Wings. 

used  to  say,  ^  If  the  Lord  would 
give  me  wings,  I  would  fly,'  "  related  John 
Wesley.  "  I  used  to  answer,  '  If  the  Lord  bids 
me  fly,  I  would  trust  Him  for  the  wings.' " 

A  more  perfect  commentary  on  life  than 
that  contained  in  these  words  would  be  hard 


22  The  World  Beautiful. 

to  find;  perfect  in  its  truth  and  its  applica- 
bility to  daily  affairs.  There  need  never  be 
the  slightest  hesitation  in  undertaking  any- 
thing that  prefigures  itself  as  the  higher 
leading.  Between  expediency  and  right  pur- 
pose there  is  simply  no  question  at  all.  The 
streno^th  of  all  the  hosts  of  heaven  is  with 
him  who  is  faithful  to  the  right. 

It  is  sometimes  believed  that  conceit  is 
rather  a  universal  attitude  of  early  life,  and 
that,  indeed,  in  inverse  ratio  to  knowledge  is 
the  egotism  that  masquerades  for  knowledge. 
Yet  it  may  be  a  question  whether  a  still  more 
serious  defect  of  life  does  not  lie  in  the  failure 
to  believe  sufficiently  in  one's  own  powers,  and 
in  failing  to  develop  their  full  possibilities. 
The  firm  conviction  that  one's  own  life  is  of 
absolutely  no  consequence  to  the  world ;  that 
it  is  beyond  one's  power  to  make  any  impress 
on  life  ;  that  beyond  the  family,  and  the  nearer 
circle  of  friends,  one's  presence  or  absence, 
ilhiess  or  health,  death  or  life,  is  of  no  sort  of 
consequence,  —  is  the  conviction  that  is  at  least 
as  suicidal  to  worthy  eftbrt  as  could  be  the 


Believe  in  the  Wings,  23 

most  flimsy  conceit  and  exaggerated  egotism. 
The  deeper  truth  is  that  belief  in  one's  pow- 
ers to  contribute  something,  at  least,  to  the 
general  life,  is  in  no  sense  an  undue  estimate 
of  his  powers.  It  is,  primarily,  confidence  in 
God.  It  is  the  humble  but  sincere  desire  that 
He  will  so  shape  our  course,  so  direct  our 
faculties,  that  we  can  enter,  however  feebly, 
into  His  great  purposes.  It  is  the  belief  so 
happily  expressed  by  John  Wesley,  that  "  if 
the  Lord  bids  me  fly,  I  would  trust  him 
for  the  wings." 

There  is  a  class  of  people  who  are  compar- 
atively valueless  to  the  world  because  of  a 
certain  morbidness  which  they  are  pleased  to 
call  sensitiveness.  In  reality  it  is  nothing  of 
the  sort.  It  is  self-love,  —  a  refined  variety 
of  it,  to  be  sure,  but  none  the  less  is  it  the 
result  of  a  selfishly  subjective  state,  in  which 
they  look  in  and  not  out,  and  down  and  not 
up,  and  fail  to  lend  a  hand,  —  not  from  any 
real  unkindness  or  unwillingness,  but  simply 
because  they  are  looking  in,  and  looking 
down,  and  do  not  see  the  opportunity.     They 


24  The  World  Beautiful 

will  tell  you  tliej  are  "  so  lonely "  and  '^  so 
blue  "  and  ''  so  unhappy  "  and  so  exceedingly 
"  misunderstood."  Well,  perhaps  they  are 
misunderstood  and  undervalued.  Often  it  is 
true ;  often  they  are  persons  of  fine  susceptibil- 
ities (which  they  mistake  for  fine  sympatliics), 
and  perhaps  under  different  circumstances 
would  reveal  qualities  of  a  higher  kind  than 
those  they  manifest.  Environment  is  a  very 
determining  influence,  and  there  are  probably 
few  of  us  who  might  not  have  been  much 
worthier  and  nuich  happier  persons  under 
circumstances  quite  diflercnt  from  the  existing 
ones.  To  have  been  born  to  inherited  wealth 
and  culture  and  its  extended  opportunities 
would  certainly  seem  to  be  a  factor  in  ad- 
vance over  that  of  being  born  in  a  log  cabin, 
and  learning  to  read  by  the  light  of  a  pine 
knot.  As  a  matter  of  actual  record,  however, 
the  history  of  great  lives  puts  a  premium  on 
the  hardships  and  the  pine  knot. 

But,  specnlation  aside,  our  business,  after  all, 
concerns  life  as  it  is,  and  not  as  it  might  be. 
*'  Here,  or  nowhere,  is  thy  kingdom."     There 


Believe  in  the  Wings. 


25 


is  something  supremely  trivial  iu  repining  be- 
cause, indeed,  one  is,  or  fancier  himself,  un- 
happy. Happiness  is  a  very  beautiful  thing, 
—  the  most  beautiful  and  heavenly  thing  in 
the  world,  —  but  it  is  a  result,  a  spiritual  con- 
dition, and  is  not  predetermined  by  a  bank 
account  or  by  the  flattering  incense  of  praise. 
Appreciation,  recognition,  is  a  factor  in  hap- 
piness ;  but  that,  too,  must  be  an  indirect  result, 
and  not  a  conscious  aim.  A  thoroughly  noble 
work  —  be  it  picture  or  poem,  or  statue  or 
statesmanship  —  will  inevitably  win  and  com- 
pel recognition ;  but  if  the  worker  looked  only 
to  that  end,  he  could  not  do  what  was  worthy 
the  end.  When  one  shouts  to  hear  the  echo 
of  his  own  voice,  it  is  not  called  eloquence. 

Happiness,  then,  is  a  condition  attained 
through  worthiness.  To  find  your  life  you 
must  lose  it.  It  is  the  law  and  the  prophets. 
One's  personal  enjoyment  is  a  very  small 
thing  ;  one's  personal  usefulness  is  a  very  im- 
portant one.  In  one  way  or  another  the 
Lord  bids  us  all  to  fly,  and  we  have  need  to 
trust  Him  for  the  wings,  and  live  in  that  in- 


26  The  World  Beautiful 

tiniate  and  close  relation  to  Him  tliat  alone 
can  receive  the  divine  guidance. 


The  Vision       Tlie  Legend  Beautiful  is  familiar 
^^  ^  ®     to  all,  —  that  scene  depicted  by  the 

Splendor.  /  ^  "^ 

poets  pen  where  the  monk  in  iiis 
cell  beheld  the  Vision,  and  questioned  whether 
he  should  go  to  give  the  daily  alms  to  the 
beggars  at  the  convent  gate,  or  should  stay. 

''  Would  the  Vision  there  remaiu  ? 
"Would  the  Vision  come  again  ? 
Then  a  voice  within  his  breast 
Whispered,  audible  and  clear 
As  if  to  the  outward  ear : 
*  Do  thy  duty  ;  that  is  best : 
Leave  unto  thy  Lord  the  rest ! '  " 

Art  and  life  are  continually  coming  into 
juxtaposition  rather  than  conjunction  ;  and  in 
this  age  of  specialties  the  question  more  and 
more  besets  every  earnest  mind,  Shall  art 
be  sacrificed  to  life,  or  shall  life  be  sacrificed 
to  art  ?  Shall  one  insist  upon  his  artistic  iso- 
lation heedless  of  the  human  call,  or  shall  he 


Tlie  Vision  and  the  S'j)lendor,  27 

respond  to  the  many  voices  that  call  to  him, 
and  neglect  his  art  ? 

Though  this  problem  confronts  chiefly  the 
thinker,  the  poet,  the  painter,  the  author,  it  is 
not  wholly  theirs.  In  a  large  degree  it  is  the 
sphinx-like  question  to  us  all.  Life  and  work 
conflict.  "  How  can  you  find  time  to  work  ?  " 
said  a  cultivated  and  very  active  woman ; 
"  there  is  so  much  else  to  be  done."  Nor  did 
she  mean  to  imply  any  sarcasm  or  to  per- 
petrate a  hon  mot  It  was  simply  the  honest 
expression  of  an  honest  opinion.  There  is  so 
much  general  activity  demanded  of  every  one 
that  to  accomplish  a  special  work  outside  this 
activity  seems  sometimes  impossible ;  and  if 
one  sacrifice  to  the  work  all  his  part  in  the 
daily  drama  of  life,  does  he  do  well  or  ill  ? 
Should  he  be  artist  first  and  man  afterward, 
or  the  reverse  ?  The  question  is  a  very  prac- 
tical one.  How  shall  one  wait  for  the  voice 
and  watch  for  the  Vision  ? 

The  solution  of  this  problem  lies  in  abso- 
lutely one  thing,  —  the  perfect  triumphant  ac- 
ceptance of  the  iDower  of  love  and  faith.     We 


28  The  World  Deaufifiil 

need  to  re-vitalize  these  words.  Love  to  man 
and  faitli  in  God  liave  been  used  as  mere 
formalisms,  and  have  thus  lost  much  of  their 
deeper  significance.  They  have  been  recorded 
as  passive  states  when  they  are,  instead,  active 
virtues.  They  form  the  magnetic  atmosphere 
by  means  of  which  the  soul  receives  of  the 
creative  magnetism  inherent  in  divine  life. 
And  with  this  constant,  overflowing  love  for 
humanity  that  is  in  spontaneous  and  sympa- 
thetic response  to  his  needs ;  with  this  vital 
and  exhilarating  faith  in  the  divine  power 
that  in  some  way  all  shall  be  wisely  over- 
ruled if  we  but  keep  our  ''prow  turned  to- 
ward good,"  as  Charlotte  Cushman  said  she 
endeavored  to  do,  —  with  this  exquisite  har- 
mony about  and  within  us,  the  perplexed 
problems  of  the  days  adjust  themselves. 

All  men  who  have  been  greatest  have  been 
in  closest  touch  with  life.  Shakespeare, 
Michael  Angelo,  Dante,  Goethe  are  among 
those  whose  names  will  readily  recur  as  the 
greatest  creative  artists,  who,  nevertheless, 
lived  in  touch  with  the  world,  and  drew  from 


The  Vision  and  the  Splendor.  29 

it  such  suggestiveness  and  insight  that  when 
the  higher  vision  dawned  on  them  they  were 
able  to  relate  it  to  the  human  need.  The 
example  of  Tennyson  is  one  to  suggest  much 
questioning.  The  greatest  poet  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  he  lived  for  his  art,  he  sought 
seclusion  and  isolation.  Whether  he  would 
have  been  more  or  less  had  he  lived  nearer 
humanity,  is  a  question  that  cannot  here  be 
entered  into  ;  and  the  world  is  too  grateful 
for  what  he  gave  it  to  seek  to  discuss  any 
limitations,  or  imagine  him  unattended  by 
the  muse  of  solitude. 

There  is  a  vast  amount  of  truth,  however, 
in  Dr.  Holmes's  felicitous  assertion  :  "  I  do 
not  talk  to  tell  people  what  I  think,  but  to 
find  out  what  I  think." 

The  clergyman,  the  essayist,  the  orator  will 
appreciate  the  subtle  truth  of  this  assertion. 
The  most  cultivated  man  can  often  better  find 
out  what  he  thinks  by  conversation  with  even 
the  uncultured  mind  than  by  solitude.  Con- 
versation is  experimental ;  it  is  also  creative, 
^ —  it  stimulates  the  mind  to  new  energies  and 
to  new  combinations  of  ideas. 


30  The  World  Beautiful 

We  live  not  only  in  an  atmosphere  com- 
posed of  oxygen,  hydrogen  and  nitrogen,  but 
in  one  which  is  simply  throbbing  and  pulsating 
and  thrilling  Avith  vitality.  It  is  life,  all  life, 
around  us.  This  atmospheric  vitality  holds  in 
solution  all  things.  We  may  draw  from  it  in 
every  conceivable  direction,  and  receive  in  a 
measure  limited  only  by  our  capacity  for  re- 
ceiving. Some  radical  thinker  boldly  asserts 
tliat  even  poverty  is  a  disease,  a  defective 
condition,  that  can  be  cured  by  setting  about 
it  in  the  right  manner.  Tlie  adepts  of  India 
produce  creations  of  various  kinds  out  of  the 
very  air  itself ;  and  their  explanation  is  that  all 
the  elements  exist  in  the  air,  and  that  he  who 
knows  the  secret  of  the  laws  governing  the 
elements  and  their  combinations  can  produce 
endless  substances  at  will. 

At  all  events,  it  is  certainly  true  that  suc- 
cess or  fiiilure  can  be  predetermined  by  a 
mental  mood  ;  that  an  individual  can  think 
prosperity  to  liimself,  so  to  speak,  just  as  cer- 
tainly as  he  can  put  out  his  hand  and  reach  a 
book  on  the  shelf.     The  secret  of  life  is  to 


The  Vision  and  the  Splendor.  31 

learn  how  to  do  this.  It  is  to  learn  how  to 
bring  our  own  spiritual  power,  which  is  cre- 
ative power,  to  bear  on  material  conditions. 

It  can  be  done.  ''  Real  power  is  in  silent 
moments,"  says  Emerson.  Circumstances, 
conditions,  surroundings,  are  as  plastic  to  the 
stamp  of  the  mind  as  the  clay  is  to  the  im- 
press of  the  sculptor. 

And  this  power  is  made  up  of  two  quali- 
ties, —  love  and  faith.  These  seem  to  be  best 
developed  through  human  touch  and  attrition. 
So  much  love,  so  much  force,  and  so  much 
force  born  of  love,  so  much  power  to  create 
the  conditions  of  one's  life. 

"  No  perfect  artist  is  developed  here 
From  any  imperfect  woman," 

said  Mrs.  Browning  in  Aurora  Leigh.  "An 
artist  who  lives  for  his  art  alone  is  a  second- 
rate  artist,"  says  the  young  poet,  Richard 
Hovey.  Through  many-veined  humanity  the 
power  is  won. 

"  Do  thy  duty ;  that  is  hest : 
Leave  unto  thy  Lord  the  rest." 

It  is  the  voice  of  poet  and  prophet. 


32  The  World  Beautiful 

Adelaide  Anne  Procter  questions  :  — 

''  Have  we  not  all,  amid  life's  petty  strife, 
Some  pure  ideal  of  a  nobler  life, 
That  ODce  seemed  possible?  " 

And  she  answers :  — 

''  We  have,  and  yet 
We  lost  it  in  the  daily  jar  and  fret, 
And  now  live  idle  in  a  vain  regret. 
But  still  our  place  is  kept,  and  it  will  wait, 
Ready  for  us  to  fill  it,  soon  or  late. 
No  star  is  ever  lost  we  once  have  seen  ; 
We  always  may  be  what  we  miglit  have  been." 

Not  only  is  that  true,  but  we  may  be  now, 
in  the  present,  that  which  we  aspire  to  be,  not- 
withstanding the  interruptions  and  the  daily 
demands.  These  are  not  obstacles  nor  hin- 
drances, but  sources  of  strength ;  or,  rather, 
they  become  sources  of  strength  when  trans- 
formed by  love  and  faith.  Met  with  distrust 
and  disturbance  they  bar  the  path  ;  met  with 
sunny  faith  they  make  themselves  into  step- 
ping-stones. Why,  it  is  the  initial  business  of 
life  to  be  happy.  One  should  go  about  treading 
on  air,  and  sip  nectar  and  ambrosia.     It  is  a 


The  Vision  and  the  Splendor.  33 

beautiful  thing  to  live.  Life  is  a  fine  art ;  it 
is  the  supreme  consummation  of  all  the  arts, 
the  final  finish  and  flower.  Acliievements  are 
not  the  result  only,  nor  even  chiefly,  of  con- 
scious labor ;  they  spring  triumphant  from  the 
power  of  thought  brought  to  bear  upon  the 
elements  out  of  w^hich  success  springs.  We  all 
remember  the  legend  of  Friar  Jerome  and  tlie 
Beautiful  Book,  how,  when  the  monk  left  his 
work  on  the  richly  illuminated  missal  to  an- 
swer the  call  of  human  needs,  he  found,  on 
his  return,  that  an  angel  had  stood  at  his 
desk  and  wrouf^ht  at  the  task  all  the  time  he 
had  been  absent. 

The  legend  is  typical  of  life.  The  painter 
leaves  his  canvas  or  his  clay,  or  the  poet  leaves 
his  poem,  to  fulfil  claims  that  press  upon 
him  from  humanity ;  and  lo !  the  angel  pre- 
sence is  there,  and  in  some  way  we  cannot  ex- 
plain the  miracle  is  wrought.  But  it  can  only 
be  wrought  for  those  who  keep  their  atmos- 
piiere  magnetic  with  love  and  faith,  for  this  is 
the  only  atmosphere  into  which  spiritual  force 
can  enter  and  assert  its  power.    Even  the  work 


34  The  World  Beautiful. 

of  Christ  himself  was  subject  to  conditions. 
"And  he  did  not  many  mighty  works  there 
because  of  their  unbelief,"  we  read.  "  Because 
of  their  unbelief ,'  —  therein  lies  the  signifi- 
cance. Even  Jesus  could  not  work  in  an  at- 
mospliere  rendered  negative  by  want  of  faith. 
Spiritual  power,  like  electricity,  must  work 
througli  the  conditions  that  conduct  it. 

Happiness  and  success  are  the  normal  con- 
dition of  life,  just  as  health  is  the  normal, 
and  disease  and  illness  the  abnormal  condition. 
This  happiness,  like  the  kingdom  of  heaven  of 
which  it  is  the  reflection,  is  within,  not  without. 
It  is  a  spiritual  state,  but  it  works  outward, 
and  asserts  its  own  conditions.  If  the  vitality 
of  the  Christ  could  but  How  into  our  efforts, 
our  friendships,  our  aspirations,  what  a  lifting 
up  to  a  higher  plane  there  would  be!  How 
imperfect  and  struggling  aim  would  leap  into 
glorious  achievement !  How  our  halting  and 
fragmentary  friendships  woidd  glow  with  di- 
vine significance,  and  deepen  into  infinite  ten- 
derness !  The  entire  scenery  of  life  would  be 
transformed.  Gloom  would  give  place  to 
gladness,  depression  to  exaltation,  inertia  to 
energy,  halting  eftbrt  to  complete  fulfilment. 


The  Vision  and  the  Splendor.  35 

Humanity  is  already  on  the  very  threshold 
of  its  higher  development.  We  stand  on  the 
brink  of  such  untold  joys  and  deeper  satis- 
factions that  there  is  no  room  for  repining  or 
regret.  IMental  and  psychic  power  is  begin- 
ning to  assert  its  potent  sway.  We  are  to  live 
in  enthusiasm  and  exaltation.  In  this  new 
state  we  shall  realize  the  transformation  ef- 
fected by  this  liberation  of  energy.  If  one 
pausing  on  a  walk  of  twenty  miles  to  care  for 
or  help  a  wayfarer,  were,  because  of  this  de- 
lay, to  be  taken  on  board  a  lightning-express 
train  and  rushed  swiftly  on  in  a  few  minutes 
to  his  destination,  he  would  not  have  cause  to 
complain  that  he  lost  time  by  helping  his 
brother,  or  that  he  failed  of  the  achievement 
of  his  own  work.  The  analogy  holds  true  in 
all  the  complicated  duties  and  demands  of 
life.  Do  not  fear  to  leave  the  Vision  and  the 
splendor.  It  will  wait;  it  will  shine  again 
brighter  than  before. 

*'  Do  thy  duty  ;  that  is  best : 
Leave  unto  thy  God  the  rest." 


FRIENDSHIP. 


No  soul  can  ever  truly  see 

Another's  highest,  noblest  part 
Save  through  the  sweet  philosophy 

And  lovmg  wisdom  of  the  heart. 

I  see  the  feet  that  fain  would  climb ; 

You,  but  the  steps  that  turn  astray. 
I  see  the  soul,  unharmed,  sublime  ; 

YoU;  but  the  garment  and  the  clay. 

Phcebe  Gary. 


THE  ENLARGE.MENT  OF  RELATIONS. 


HE  enlargement  of  social  relations 
depends  far  less  on  opportunity 
than  on  sympathy.  It  depends 
to  a  very  slight  degree  on  travel, 


on  sight-seeing,  on  the  number  of  people, 
even,  that  one  meets ;  but  very  largely  on  the 
power  of  coming  into  real  relations  with  some 
of  that  number.  Responsiveness,  sympathy, 
receptivity,  —  these  are  the  doors  through 
which  life  enters  to  us  and  through  which  we 
go  forth  into  life.  On  this  power  depend  the 
conditions  of  success ;  and  on  it  also  depends 
conduct,  which  Matthew  Arnold  rightly  de- 
signates three-fourths  of  life.  The  enlarge- 
ment of  all  that  rang^e  of  feelinoj  and  thouoht 
which  we  call  life  does  not  lie  in  its  external 
scenery.  It  is  not,  necessarily,  the  larger  life 
to  have  a  more  imposing  house,  or  finer  ap- 
parel, or  more  dainty  and  luxurious  surround- 


40  The  World  Beautiful. 

ings  than  our  neiglibor.  These  are  accidental 
things  that  may,  or  may  not,  accompany  it. 
They  are  no  inherent  factors  of  the  perfection 
or  the  completeness  of  life.  Enlargement  is 
something  more  intimate,  more  permanent  in 
its  nature,  more  entirely  dependent  upon  those 
qualities  that  make  personality.  In  fact,  if 
one  comes  to  scrutinize  it  closely,  the  enlarge- 
ment of  life  is  gained  by  living  so  in  harmony 
with  the  divine  will  —  so  at  one  with  it  — 
that  one  is  receptive  and  responsive  to  every 
sweet  inlluence.  When  the  wandering  wind 
finds  out  an  ^Eolian  harp,  it  becomes  musical ; 
but 

''  Hornpipe  and  hurdy-gurdy  both  are  dull 
Unto  the  most  musicianly  of  winds." 

Now  this  state  of  harmony  with  the  divine 
forces  is  not  one  of  mere  negation.  It  is  not 
one  of  mere  passivity.  It  is  the  very  highest 
positive  state.  It  is  simply  magnetic  with 
vitality.  It  is  the  ideal  condition  of  life,  and 
therefore  tlic  condition  of  supreme  success. 
It  is  tiie  condition  of  recognition  and  of 
vision. 


The  Enlargement  of  Relations.         41 

It  is  easy  enough,  however,  for  any  of  us  to 
philosophize  on  what  we  should  be ;  to  dis- 
cern the  better  conditions.  The  test  is  to 
realize  them.  And  this  is  as  practical  a  work 
as  any  labor  of  the  hand.  The  initial  step  to 
be  taken  in  any  enterprise  or  endeavor  is  first 
to  realize  in  one's  self  harmonious  and  recep- 
tive conditions. 

Xow  the  jars  and  discords  come  mostly 
from  without ;  the  harmony  and  sweetness 
nmst  first  be  found  within.  If  one  is  con- 
scious of  a  fretful  and  discordant  state,  let  him 
seek  entire  solitude,  if  only  for  a  moment. 
Then  call  up  the  spiritual  forces.  Take  a 
strong  stand  in  the  affirmative.  "  I  and  my 
Father  are  one."  That  is  not  merely  a  phrase 
of  rhetoric  or  an  assertion  that  Jesus  alone 
could  make.  We  may  all  make  it.  ''  I  and 
my  Father  are  one."  He  is  the  vine  ;  we  the 
branches.  Demand  to  be  taken  into  the  true 
life,  into  one's  own  life.  Do  not  merely  de- 
sire to  be  at  peace  with  all,  to  love  all,  but 
affirm  that  you  are  so.  The  love  of  God 
and  all  his  creatures  will  set  toward  you  till 


42  The  World  Beautiful. 

you  are  upborne  on  the  current  of  divine 
magnetism. 

"  His  strength  was  as  the  strength  of  ten 
Because  his  heart  was  pure," 

writes  the  poet  of  Sir  Galahad.  Therein  lies 
the  true  philosophy.  The  latter  line  explains 
ivhij  he  had  the  tenfold  strength.  AH  life 
is  truly  such  only  as  it  exists  in  harmony  with 
its  environment.  AYe  are  now  entering  into 
tlie  spiritual  age,  —  a  fact  that  is  just  as  true 
statistically  as  was  that  of  the  stone  age  or  of 
the  iron  a2fe.  We  have  lived  throuQ:h  the  aixes 
where  the  physical  and  then  the  intellectual 
powers  were  those  most  in  harmony  with  the 
environment  of  the  time.  Now  the  environ- 
ment is  spiritual,  and  the  spiritual  faculties 
must  be  those  developed.  It  is  the  age  of 
supcrnaturalism,  one  may  say,  if  we  may  so 
call  that  law  just  higher  than  the  ordinary 
and  familiar  one,  and  quite  as  natural  on  its 
own  plane.  The  supernatural,  after  all,  is 
merely  tliat  the  higher  has  taken  the  place  of 
tlie   lower.     Emerson   said,   fifty   years   ago : 


The  Enlargement  of  Relations,        43 

"  Our  painful  labors  are  unnecessary ;  there  is 
a  better  way."  Now  we  are  coming  into  the 
actual  knowledge  of  that  better  way.  The 
soul  that  can  hold  itself  in  direct  and  respon- 
sive relation  to  the  Infinite  Love  will  com- 
mand undreamed  of  potency.  It  will  at  once 
enter  on  the  true  enlargement  of  life. 

No  other  possession  of  life  holds  such  pre- 
ponderating value  as  one's  friends.  All  beside 
these  are  a  part  of  the  scenery  of  the  external 
and  temporal  world  ;  but  friendships  are  of 
the  eternal  and  the  divine.  It  is  these  that 
give  value  and  zest  to  life;  that  furnish  it 
with  interest,  with  charm,  and  with  happi- 
ness. To  be  rich  in  friends  is  to  be  poor  in 
nothing.  It  is  to  possess  that  infinite  reser- 
voir of  what  may  be,  for  want  of  a  better 
term,  denominated  capital  in  life,  in  that  it 
predetermines  success  in  whatever  line  of 
achievement  one  may  clioose  to  work.  A 
range  of  warm  and  strong  friendsliips  creates 
the  magnetic  atmosphere  that  vitalizes  every 
element  within  its  influence,  so  that  it  is  not 
that  social  enjoyments  and  companionships  are 


U  The  World  Beautiful 

in  any  sense  interruptions  to  specific  work, 
however  important,  but  that  tliej  yield  in- 
stead the  very  elements  out  of  which  it  is 
best  created.  The  genuine  friendships  of  life 
are  largely  discovered,  not  acquired.  We  find 
them  rather  than  make  them.  They  are  pre- 
destined relationships  and  are  recognized  in- 
tuitively. 

"  ^Ye  meet  —  at  least  those  who  are  true  to 
their  instincts  meet  —  a  succession  of  persons 
through  our  lives,  all  of  whom  have  some  pe- 
culiar errand  to  us,"  writes  Margaret  Fuller. 
"  There  is  an  outer  circle  whose  existence  we 
perceive,  but  with  whom  we  stand  in  no  real 
relation.  They  tell  us  the  news,  they  act  on  ua 
in  the  olfices  of  society,  they  show  us  kimluess 
and  aversion ;  but  their  iutluence  does  not 
penetrate ;  we  are  nothing  to  them,  nor  they 
to  us,  except  as  a  part  of  the  world's  furniture. 

*'  Another  circle  within  tliis  are  dear  and 
near  to  us.  We  know  them  and  of  what  kind 
they  are.  They  are  not  to  us  mere  facts,  but 
intelligible  thoughts  of  the  divine  mind.  We 
like  to  see  how  they  are  unfolded  ;  we  like  to 
meet  them,  and  part  with  them  ;  we  like  their 
action  upon  us,  and  the  pause  that  succeeds  and 


The  Enlargement  of  Relations,         45 

enables  us  to  appreciate  its  quality.  Often  we 
leave  them  ou  our  path  and  return  no  more,  but 
we  bear  them  in  our  memory,  tales  which  have 
been  told,  and  whose  meaning  has  been  felt. 

''But  yet  a  nearer  group  there  are,  beings 
born  under  the  same  star,  and  bound  with  us  in 
a  common  destiny.  They  are  not  mere  acquain- 
tances, mere  friends,  but  when  we  meet  are 
sharers  of  our  very  existence.  There  is  no 
separation ;  the  same  thought  is  given  at  the 
same  moment  to  both  ;  indeed,  it  is  born  of  the 
meeting,  and  would  not  otherwise  have  been 
called  into  existence  at  all.  These  not  only 
know  themselves  more,  but  are  more  for  hav- 
ing met,  and  regions  of  their  being,  which 
would  else  have  lain  sealed  in  cold  obstruction, 
burst  into  leaf  and  bloom  and  song. 

*'  The  times  of  these  meetings  are  fated,"  she 
goes  on  to  say,  "  nor  will  either  one  be  able 
ever  to  meet  any  other  person  in  the  same 
way." 

It  is  one  of  the  paths  to  success  and  happi- 
ness in  life,  or  rather  it  is  success  and  hap- 
piness in  itself,  to  be  swiftly  responsive  to 
impressions  of  this  character,  to  recognize  the 
angel  when  he  draws  near.     Dickens  touched 


46  The  World  Beautiful 

the  deeper  truth  in  this  relation  when  he 
wrote  that  the  people  who  have  to  do  with 
us,  and  we  with  them,  are  drawing  near ;  that 
our  paths,  from  whatever  distant  quarters  of 
the  globe  they  start,  are  converging ;  and  that 
what  is  set  for  them  to  do  for  us  and  for  U3 
to  do  for  them,  ivill  all  he  done. 

The  fatalism  of  friendship  might  well  be 
a  subject  for  extended  consideration.  It  is 
fate,  —  it  is  predestination,  or  it  is  nothing. 

The  friendships  that  are  best  worth  having 
are  those  that  come  unsought.  Suddenly  we 
recognize  the  shining  beauty  before  us,  and 
life  is  invested  with  a  divine  radiance.  The 
talent  for  making  friends,  or  for  discovering 
them,  is  a  specific  and  distinctive  one,  and  is 
perhaps  the  result  of  a  combination  of  happy 
qualities ;  yet  in  any  perfect  friendship  there 
is  always  the  sense  of  the  unexpected,  the 
miraculous. 

Nor  sconr  tlio  soas  nor  sift  manliind 
A  poot  or  a  friond  to  find. 
Behold,  lie  watches  at  the  door  I 
Behold,  his  sluulow  on  the  Hoor  I 


Friends  Discovered,  not  Made.         47 

Friends  Fi'ieiids  ill  any  true  and  abiding 
discovered,  sense,  therefore,  are  in  the  nature  of 
not  ma  e  ^  discovery;  but  when  discovered, 
it  is  because  of  a  predestined  spiritual  relation 
that  compels  recognition  and  which  transcends 
and  dominates  all  temporary  and  external  con- 
ditions or  circumstances.  Friendship  of  this 
order  is  as  eternal  as  the  spirit  itself.  It  is  a 
part  of  spiritual  identity  and  simply  cannot  be 
destroyed.  As  things  go  with  human  beings 
in  a  finite  world,  it  may  be  subjected  to  much 
jar  and  fret,  and  be  thereby  deprived  of  much 
of  its  inherent  joy  and  exhilaration  and  the 
luxury  of  that  sympathetic  comprehension 
which,  in  its  ideal  state,  would  be  perfect ; 
but  still  it  can  endure  this  and  not  be  de- 
stroyed because  there  is  that  in  its  nature 
w^hich  is  of  the  divine  order  and  therefore 
indestructible.  Of  course,  this  is  that  rarest 
order  of  friendship  which  comes  not  only  not 
more  than  once  in  a  lifetime,  but  perhaps  not 
more  than  once  among  a  hundred,  or  even  a 
thousand  lives.  It  is  one  of  the  heavenly 
mysteries,  and  cannot   be  accounted   for   by 


48  The  World  Beautiful, 

any  earthly  formula.  It  is,  too,  a  relation 
for  which  the  world  has  neither  sympathy  nor 
comprehension.  ''  Oh,  you  idealize  so-and- 
so,"  says  society ;  "  you  see  what  is  not  there. 
You  set  up  a  chimerical  creation  of  mere 
fancy,  and  fall  down  and  worship  it." 

To  listen  to  this  is  to  turn  away  from  the 
heavenly  vision ;  to  be  deaf  to  the  voices  which 
the  multitude  cannot  hear  and  which  call  to 
you  alone.  To  idealize  is  not  to  follow  a  delu- 
sion, to  mistake  clay  for  alabaster,  but  it  is  to  see 
more  clearly,  to  discern  that  finer  significance 
that  he  who  runs  may  not  read.  It  is  only 
the  exceptional  nature  that  can  be  what  the 
world  calls  idealized  which  is  simply  recogni- 
tion for  what  is  actually  there,  and  not  in  the 
least  a  process  of  investing  it  with  qualities 
it  does  not  possess.  It  is  the  inner  vision 
that  sees  "  the  beauties  hid  from  common 
si^rht." 

Any  friendship  that  is  worth  the  name  is 
not  in  the  least  a  matter  of  reason  or  choice, 
but  rather  of  magnetism  and  temperament. 
It  can  bear  almost  everything  of  friction,  jar, 


Friends  Discovered,  not  Made.         49 

annoyance,  or  pain,  —  not,  surely,  without 
losing  much  of  its  divineness  and  sweetest 
joy,  yet  still  it  can  bear  them,  —  and  still 
spring  up  again  with  renewed  vitality.  And 
as  it  is  a  wholly  spiritual  relation,  it  may  not 
only  spring  up  with  renewed  vitality  from  ex- 
periences that  would  simply  exterminate  and 
annihilate  any  lesser  bond,  but  in  the  region 
where  it  lives  —  the  miracle  region  of  life  — 
the  renewal  may  be  absolute  regeneration  as 
well,  and  transmute  it  into  an  infinitely  higher 
condition,  —  purified,  redeemed,  from  the  ele- 
ments that  so  nearly  wrought  its  wreck  and 
destruction.  It  may  undergo  a  kind  of  resur- 
rection hour,  in  w^hich  all  baser  elements  are 
eliminated  from  the  crucible  in  which  it  has 
been  tried ;  sown  in  weakness,  it  may  be 
raised  in  power.  This  experience,  while  ex- 
ceptional, is  possible,  and  depends  upon  the 
magnanimity  and  the  generosity  of  the  one 
who,  of  either,  has  the  most  to  forgive,  and 
the  way  in  which  the  forgiveness  is  offered. 
A  certain  mingling  of  dignity  and  delicacy, 
with  yet  a  liberal  allowance  of  generosity  and 

4 


50  The  World  Beautiful 

faith  in  a  better  future,  go  a  great  way  in  this 
regeneration  of  personal  relations.  One  who 
receives  this  feels  the  responsibility  upon  him 
of  proving  not  again  unworthy  this  noblest  of 
aid  ;  and  so  the  very  springs  of  endeavor  and 
aspiration  are  renewed,  and  there  rises  before 
Iiis  vision  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth. 

People  talk  lightly  and  carelessly  of  friend- 
sliip  when  they  do  not  know  the  meaning 
of  the  term ;  when  tliey  are  not,  themselves, 
the  stuff  of  which  friends  are  made  ;  when 
they  know  less  of  the  truth  and  trust  and  ten- 
derness that  the  name  implies  than  i\i.  Flam- 
marion  believes  that  he  knows  of  the  emotions 
of  the  inhabitants  of  Mars.  To  exchange 
cards  or  calls  or  dinner  invitations ;  to  be 
members  of  the  same  club  or  the  same 
cimrch ;  to  hold  views  in  common  as  to 
^Yagner  operas  and  the  drama  as  it  is  in  Ib- 
sen, —  is  no  more  friendship  than  it  is  politics 
or  theology ;  although  these  relations,  and 
others  even  more  superficial,  masquerade  un- 
der its  name.  In  its  true  sense  friendship  is 
a  relation  that  defies  analysis,  tlefies  cxplana- 


Friends  Discovered,  not  Made.         51 

tion,  and  defies  all  the  known  laws  of  the 
chart  of  polite  society,  because  it  is  grounded 
in  something  far  deeper  and  more  abiding. 
It  is,  when  found,  something  to  be  held  sa- 
credly as  the  inestimable  treasure  of  life,  as 
its  profoundest  and  most  potent  source  of  in- 
spiration. It  is  something  in  which  to  be- 
lieve as  one  believes  in  God.  ''  The  soul's 
emphasis  is  always  right."  Its  insight  is  un- 
erring, and  its  vision  swift  to  discern  that 
which  is  spiritual  reality. 

There  are  plenty  of  people  fitted  out  with 
a  good  relay  of  substantial  qualities  and  pleas- 
ing attributes,  who  are  admirably  calculated  to 
fill  the  place  of  the  extensive  outer  court  of 
agreeable  acquaintances.  But  that  life  alone 
is  rich  which  holds  one  perfect  friendship,  in 
which  mutual  sympathy  is  mutual  clairvoy- 
ance as  well ;  in  wliich  sacrifice  on  either  side 
would  be  luxury  and  not  trial ;  in  which  the 
bo'nd  is  indestructible  because  it  is  that  of  the 
spirit,  and  therefore  divine  and  eternal. 

It  is  quite  useless  ^^  to  strike  leagues  of 
friendship  with  cheap  people  where  no  friend- 


62  77^6  World  Beautiful. 

ship  can  be."  People,  like  pictures,  should 
have  the  advantage  of  a  good  light  and  of 
fair  and  true  perspective.  This  is  only  simple 
justice.  Many  persons  are  like  the  pictures 
whose  color  is  put  on  in  the  decomposition  du 
ton,  —  the  method  that  blends  only  at  a  cer- 
tain focal  distance.  Seen  too  near,  the  can- 
vas is  all  one  blot  and  blur  of  shapeless  smears 
of  paint,  witliout  meaning  or  values  ;  but  go 
to  the  true  focal  distance,  and,  behold,  the 
purple  smear  becomes  a  mountain  range  ;  the 
shapeless  patches  of  blue  or  gray  or  rose  be- 
come a  sky  and  clouds ;  the  red  and  green 
spots  show  as  scarlet  flowers  in  the  grass, 
and  the  entire  landscape  is  palpitating  with 
light  and  throbbing  with  life.  It  is  lumi- 
nous and  beautiful ;  the  artist  has  fairly 
painted  ligiit  as  well  as  color.  Bat  all 
this  is  only  to  be  felt  and  seen  at  the  true 
focal  distance.  Another  school  of  painting 
permits  the  closest  scrutiny,  but  at  a  dis- 
tance you  miss  the  wondcM-ful  atmospheric 
effects  and  the  light  and  life  of  the  impres- 
sionist. 


Friends  Discovered,  not  Made.         53 

There  are  people  who  correspond  to  each, 
—  those  who  suffer  by  being  seen  too  near, 
and  those  who  may  be  seen  to  advantage  in 
small  details,  but  whose  character  or  achieve- 
ments when  viewed  in  perspective  are  not 
impressive.  Each  must  be  given  the  advan- 
tage of  the  true  light  and  the  true  focal  dis- 
tance. 

Again,  friendship,  like  love,  must  be  largely 
taken  "for  better,  for  worse."  It  is  idle  to 
"  throw  over "  a  friend  who  in  many  ways 
gives  you  pleasant  and  agreeable  companion- 
ship, because,  indeed,  you  discover  faults  not 
at  first  perceived.  If  one  waits  to  find  per- 
fection in  his  friend,  he  will  probably  wait 
long  and  live  and  die  unfriended  at  last.  The 
fine  art  of  living,  indeed,  is  to  draw  from  each 
person  his  best.  Friendship  is  in  itself  as  fine 
an  art  as  is  music  or  painting  or  sculpture. 
Let  the  artist  approach  the  keyboard,  and 
what  melodies  does  he  evolve  ?  Let  the  un- 
trained and  the  ungifted  come,  and  we  have 
discords.  The  skilled  fingers  of  the  sculptor 
touch  the  clay  into  beauty  of  form  and  charm 


54  The  World  Beaut'ifnl 

of  suggestion  ;  the  painter,  the  poet,  brings 
color  and  vision  and  power ;  but  the  one  not 
endowed  with  the  artist's  genius  produces  dis- 
cords, daubs,  or  meaningless  rliynic.  So  with 
life.  The  individual  gifted  with  tact,  faitli, 
sweetness,  and  charm  creates  the  very  quali- 
ties in  which  he  believes  and  which  he  him- 
self possesses.  He  "  gets  on "  with  people 
harmoniously.  It  is  the  exquisite  result  of 
higli  qualities. 

Per  contra,  to  be  swift  to  discern  the  faults 
or  follies  of  others  does  not  argue  the  pos- 
session of  superiority.  It  takes  far  less  in-^ 
sight  to  discover  defects  than  it  does  to 
discern  noble  and  lovely  qualities.  "  It  re- 
quires a  god  to  recognize  a  god."  Noble 
people  recognize  each  other  intuitively.  Of 
course  there  are  persons  witli  whom  no  friend- 
ship can  be, — people  who  are  cheap,  petty,  self- 
ish, and  self-seeking.  One  should  not  "  strike 
leagues  of  friendship "  with  these,  for  with 
them  no  friendship  can  be. 

Nothing  is  more  fatal  to  friendly  relations 
tlian  comi)laints  and  reproaches  and  demands 


Friends  Discovered,  not  Made,         55 

for  explanations.  People  must  be  judged  iu 
the  wholeness  of  their  conduct.  A  thousand 
subtle  influences,  unexpected  and  unforeseen 
events,  have  their  action  and  reaction  on  life. 
A  thousand  things  occur  that  can  neither  be 
analyzed  nor  defined.  i\Iany  a  temporary 
alienation  is  effectively  overcome  by  silence. 
Reproaches,  questionings,  but  widen  the  gulf 
Leaving  it  alone,  taking  up  other  interests 
and  ideas,  bridges  it  over.  Then,  too,  if  peo- 
ple would  truly  meet,  it  must  be  in  an  at- 
mosphere above  the  merely  personal  and  local 
and  visible.  By  different  and  very  diverse 
paths  they  may  gain  the  same  spiritual  plane ; 
and  when  there,  meeting  is  inevitable.  In 
fact,  there  is  tliis  element  of  inevitableness  in 
all  friendship  worthy  the  name.  It  is  not  so 
much  an  achievement  or  an  agreement  as  it 
is  a  predestined  relation.  Its  strongest  bond 
is  charm.  "  ]\Ien  talk  of  morals,"  says  Emer- 
son, "  but  it  is  manners  tliat  associate  us." 
More  deeply  still,  it  is  tastes  that  associate  us. 
An  expression  that  jars  on  one's  sense  of  taste 
will  undo  in  an  instant  all  the  influence  or 


56  The  World  Beaut  if  id. 

impression  made  by  sterling  virtues  through 
a  term  of  jears.  A  defect  in  knowledge, 
even  in  morals,  can  be  condoned,  but  not 
defective  perception.  For  its  roots  lie  deep 
in  temperament,  in  tlie  lack  of  all  that  cul- 
ture which  is  the  result  of  a  thousand  subtle 
influences. 

The  lack  of  fine  perception  that  results 
in  want  of  consideration  for  others,  in  for- 
getful ness  and  carelessness  in  little  things ; 
that  imposes  upon  the  time,  strength,  or  re- 
sources of  other  people,  is  a  defect  more  inim- 
ical to  friendship  than  is  many  a  graver  fault 
in  morals.  It  implies  lack  of  good  breeding, 
lack  of  refinement,  lack  of  a  thousand  essen- 
tials of  daily  intercourse. 

Cheapness  of  nature  can  be  redeemed  only 
from  one  source, —  that  of  the  invisible  power 
on  tlie  divine  side  of  life.  By  seeking  this  in 
silence  and  concentration  for  a  little  time  each 
day,  all  refinement  and  loveliness  and  charm 
can  be  achieved.     It  is  the  magic  of  life. 


A  Psychological  Problem, 


A  Psycho-  Liking  and  not  liking  people  is 
logical  a  condition  whose  causes  refuse  to 
be  analyzed.  It  is  a  result  that  is, 
seemingly,  independent  of  the  usual  processes, 
and  like  the  fragrance  of  the  rose  is  to  be  per- 
ceived and  enjoyed,  but  not  reduced  to  exact 
analysis.  You  do  not  like  people  because 
they  are,  specifically,  rich  or  poor,  great  or 
obscure,  brilliant  or  dull,  learned  or  ignorant, 
but  for  some  reason  that  goes  deeper  than 
each  or  all  of  these.  Nor,  indeed,  do  30U 
always,  nor  by  any  means,  care  most  for  the 
people  who  are  kindest  to  you,  and  least  for 
those  who  are  less  thoughtful.  For  liking, 
regard,  friendship,  —  whatever  form  or  de- 
gree the  feeling  may  assume,  is  independent 
of  gratitude.  It  is  very  possible  to  feel  a 
deep  sense  of  obligation,  a  very  strong  and 
sincere  gratitude,  quite  independent  of  and 
apart  from  a  strong  personal  liking. 

There  are  persons  —  we  all  know  them  — 
who  do  us  good  and  not  evil  in  all  visible  and 
ostensible  ways ;  who  are  always  agreeable  so 
far  as  outward  manner  and  words  go,  and  to 


58  The  World  Beautiful 

whom  we  arc  and  sliould  be  grateful ;  yet 
wliom  we  hold  in  a  curiously  instinctive  dis- 
trust. It  is  a  distrust,  or  even  a  dislike,  that 
we  will  not  confess  to  ourselves ;  that  we  do 
not,  as  a  matter  of  conscience  or  intelligence, 
admit  that  we  feel,  but  all  the  same  it  is 
there,  and  neither  reason  nor  philosophy  can 
wholly  eradicate  it. 

Perhaps  tlie  real  quality  for  which  we 
most  deeply  care  in  people  is  responsive- 
ness, and  this  is  an  affair  of  temperament.  It 
is  also  a  matter  of  mutual  relation.  A  may 
be  responsive  to  B,  while  he  is  not  in  the 
least  so  to  C,  and  wliile  B  and  C  are  by  no 
means  responsive  to  each  other.  It  seems  to 
be  a  spiritual  relation,  predetermined  and 
foreordained,  and  quite  beyond  the  influence 
or  the  compulsion  of  mortal  existence.  It  is 
or  it  is  not,  and,  apparently,  you  have  your- 
self nothing  to  do  with  the  matter  one  way 
or  the  other. 

Of  course  there  is  plenty  of  getting  on  in 
the  social  world  tliat  has  no  possible  relation 
to  the  inner  springs  of  feeling.     Social  con- 


A  Psychological  Problem.  59 

tact  is  for  the  most  part  superficial,  and  gov- 
erned b}'  laws  of  ceremonial  etiquette.  Only 
the  barbarian  is  rude  to  persons  he  does  not 
like.  A  high  degree  of  civilization,  while  it 
is  not,  necessarily,  synonymous  with  Christian 
feeling,  simulates  its  code.  Courtesy  is  not 
Christianity,  but  is  its  imitation.  While  the 
latter  enjoins  that  one  love  his  neighbor  as 
himself,  the  former  enjoins  only  that  one  shall 
appear  to  love  his  neighbor  as  himself  Nor 
is  courtesy  to  be  despised,  even  if  it  exist  only 
as  veneer.  True  courtesy  implies  a  great 
many  very  real  virtues  of  self-restraint,  gentle 
consideration,  and  patience,  even  if  it  does 
not  imply  love.  And  that  is  the  quality  be- 
yond our  power  to  compel.  We  are  under 
obligation  to  give  entire  courtesy  always  to 
our  neighbor,  but  to  give  him  love  is  beyond 
any  power  unless  it  gives  itself.  We  do  not 
*  love  people  because  they  are  good  to  us,  or 
because  they  give  us  things  or  do  us  favors,  or 
because  they  are  beautiful  or  rich  or  famous 
or  learned,  —  because  they  possess  this,  that,  or 
the  other,  —  but  because  —  we  cannot  tell  why 


60  The  World  Beautifal 

"  Thought  is  deeper  than  all  speech; 
Feeling  deeper  than  all  thought." 

And  it  is  feeling  that  governs  the  genuine 
liking,  —  the  eternal,  predetermined,  foreor- 
dained friendship. 

You  may  realize  that  in  conversation  you 
find  the  chief  entertaimnent  and  the  highest 
social  enjoyment;  and  still  there  is  So-and-so, 
whom  you  never  remember  hearing  say  any- 
thing out  of  the  ordinary  line,  yet  whose  pres- 
ence is  perpetual  joy.  He  may  remark  that 
it  rained  yesterday  and  that  the  sun  sliines 
to-day,  and  yet  the  commonplaceness  enter- 
tains you  more  than  would  the  brilliant  con- 
versational pyrotechnics  of  another.  In  foct, 
you  care  nothing  for  what  he  says,  —  it  is 
what  he  is.  If  he  said  nothing,  he  would 
enchant  the  hours  for  you  all  the  same.  So 
that,  although  conversation  is  to  you  the 
greatest  of  joys,  it  is  not,  evidently,  the  su- 
preme attraction  in  this  rare  relation  of  deep 
and  genuine  liking. 

Nor  does  presence  and  familiarity  dull  its 
glamour,  nor  absence  and  time  efface  the  spell. 


A  Psychological  Problem.  61 

It  is  the  rapture  of  life  that  is  new  every 
morning  and  fresh  every  evening.  It  is  that 
glory  of  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land. 
It  is  the  ecstasy  of  recognition,  and  is  due 
wholly  and  solely  to  intuitive  insight. 

Psychical  science  has  quite  conclusively  es- 
tablislied  the  truth  of  our  complex  personality, 
and  it  designates  one  of  these  selves  as  the 
higher  self.  This  higher  self  is  to  our  appar- 
ent self,  as  daily  manifested  on  its  lower 
plane  of  life,  as  is  the  ideal  to  the  actual.  In 
plant  growth  every  leaf  and  bud  is  seen  to 
have  an  ideal  towards  which  it  tends.  In 
humanity  each  individual  has  this  ideal  self, 
even  though  sometimes  so  overlaid  and  over- 
fjhadowed  with  the  material  and  the  un- 
{vorthy,  with  the  transient  and  the  trivial,  as 
to  fail  of  beino:  discernible.  What  does 
Browning  say  in  "  A  Toccato  of  Galuppi  "  ? 

*'  The  soul,  surely,  is  immortal  —  icliere  a  soul  can  he 
discerned." 

It  is  not  invariably  the  case  that  a  soul  can 
be  discerned. 


62  The  ^yo^ld  Beautiful. 

This  point  aside,  however,  it  is  more  than  a 
question  if  this  swift  recognition,  tliis  intuitive, 
rapturous  liking  tliat  we  all  instantly  feel  for 
some  people,  and  that  no  aggregation  of  good 
qualities  will  yet  inspire  us  with  for  others, 
—  it  is  more  than  a  question  if  this  is  not  the 
intuitive  recognition  of  the  higher  self  of  the 
individual.  What  you  love  in  your  friend  is 
not  himself,  as  ordinarily  seen  or  estimated, 
but  his  higher  self,  that  few  see,  or  that  you 
alone  discern.  It  is  to  his  higher  self  that 
you  are  responsive,  and  it  is  that  which  in 
some  mysterious  manner  is  responsive  to  you. 
What  he  is  to  tlie  world,  or  the  v/orld  to  him, 
you  do  not  care.  It  is  what  he  is  to  you  that 
is  of  importance. 

It  is  possible,  nay,  it  is  easy,  to  feel  very 
kindly  toward  one  who>c  presence  in  the 
sense  of  companionslnp  is  distasteful  and 
hard  to  endure.  It  is  not  specifically 
because  he  is  rich  or  poor,  or  great  or 
unknown,  good  or  bad,  fashionable  or  un- 
fashionable, learned  or  simple.  For  the  fact 
of   liking   transcends    all    these    things,   and 


A  Psychological  Problem,  63 

defies  exact  analysis.  Dr.  Fell's  theory  is 
what  we  all  come  back  to  at  last.  You  may 
love  a  person  out  of  that  higlier  state  of  being 
we  call  the  Christian  life ;  but  you  can  only 
like  him  from  reasons  of  temperamental  adap- 
tability. The  friend  one  likes  and  cares  for 
in  the  sense  of  companionship,  who  can  never 
come  too  often  nor  stay  too  long,  with  wliom 
presence  is  always  a  joy  and  solitude  a  sym- 
pathy, —  such  friends  as  these  are  ours  purely 
by  right  of  temperamental  accord.  One's 
friendships  in  the  sense  of  one's  personal  en- 
joyments are  matters  of  sympathy,  of  tastes,  of 
nmtual  experiences,  of  culture,  of  habits,  and 
general  scope  of  life,  —  a  whole  world,  indeed, 
into  which  only  the  initiate  can  enter,  and 
whose  atmosphere  can  neitlicr  be  translated 
nor  communicated  to  those  who  are  not  in  it 
and  of  it.  They  belong  to  tlie  sphere  of  life 
which  is  found  and  not  made.  "  That  man 
is  my  friend  v/hom  I  encounter  on  the  line  of 
my  own  march,"  says  Emerson  ;  "  to  whom  I 
do  not  decline  and  who  does  not  decline  to 
me,  but,  native  of  the  same  atmosphere,  holds 
always  the  same  place." 


64  The  World  Beaut'ifal 


The  Supreme       After  all,  say  what  we  will, 
uxTiry  0       ^j^^  ^^g  supreme  luxury  of  life 

Life. 

is  sympathetic  compaiuoiiship. 
Friendship  is  a  comprehensive  term,  and  to  a 
considerable  degree  comprises  those  relations 
of  friendly  feeling  which  are  given,  which 
should  be  given,  freely  and  widely,  but 
which  do  not,  necessarily,  involve  the  element 
of  companionship.  One  may  give  all  good 
feeling  and  good  wishes,  and  be  quite  willing 
to  give  occasional  time  to  the  individual 
whom,  after  all,  for  his  own  pleasure  alone, 
purely  as  a  personal  matter,  he  would  never 
long  to  see.  Because  it  is  only  companion- 
ship that  can  be  absolutely  desired  and  longed 
for,  and  those  who  give  it  in  any  measure  are 
comparatively  few,  and  those  who  give  it  in 
perfect  measure  still  more  rare. 

In  this  the  vital  quality  is  perfect  mutual 
understanding.  It  is  tlie  quality  the  Italians 
exquisitely  express  as  that  of  being  simpatica. 
It  cannot  be  defined  nor  acquired,  because 
it  is  a  temperamental  relation.      It  is  or  it 


The  Supreme  Luxury  of  Life.         65 

is   not,   and  its   origin  is  prior  to    all    our 
questioning. 

Among  its  attributes  are  similarity  of  ex- 
periences. To  care  for  the  same  authors  or 
the  same  plays  or  the  same  range  of  human 
interests  does  not  necessarily  create  sympa- 
thetic companionship,  though  it  is  safe  to  say 
it  never  exists  without  this.  And  still  in  no 
dead  level  of  accord  is  it  found.  The  like- 
ness of  differences  is  more  attractive  than  the 
likeness  of  similarities. 

But  there  is  a  conversational  freemasonry 
that  exists  in  a  kind  of  foreordained  way, 
and  which  people  do  not  make,  but  simply 
discover.  To  like  or  dislike  Wagner's  music, 
Signora  Duse's  acting,  Pierre  Loti's  romance, 
Gladstone's  statesmanship,  Mr.  Henley's  poe- 
try, the  Dutch  Sensitivists,  the  French  Sym- 
bolists, —  to  espouse  one  side  or  the  other  of 
the  vexed  questions  of  the  day,  is  not  so  much 
the  point  as  it  is  to  flash  back  opinion  and 
repartee  and  comment  on  these  existing  phases 
of  art  and  criticism.  The  world  would  be  far 
duller  than  it  is  if  there  were  not  some  one 

5 


GG  The  World  Beautiful 

Kq  retort,  when  you  assert  so-and-so  of  French 
Impressionism,  '*  Ah,  but  don't  you  know  that 
Monet  himself  thinks  "  this  or  that  ?  or  who 
revises  your  wavering  recollection  of  ^Marten 
JNIaarten's  latest  poem,  or  sets  your  denuncia- 
tions or  ecstasies  to  a  new  key,  by  the  flash 
of  wit  or  raillery  or  knowledge.  All  this 
makes  the  freemasonry  of  that  atmosphere  we 
name  culture,  and  which  is  an  unconscious 
result,  and  not  at  all  a  matter  of  ethics  or  de- 
termination. It  is  this  play  and  freedom  and 
brightness  and  spontaneousness  that  make  the 
true  social  equality.  For  social  equality  is 
never  determined,  in  its  finest  and  most  endur- 
ing sense,  by  rank,  or  wcaltli,  or  even  knowl- 
edge, but  by  culture.  In  this  exquisite  sym- 
patliy  of  companionship  lies  the  true  luxury 
of  life. 

And  the  social  luxury  becomes  the  spiritual 
necessity.  To  receive  happiness  and  to  give 
it  are  equal  in  the  just  measure  for  measure. 
To  one  who  is,  for  instance,  in  the  role  of  host 
there  can  be  no  more  bitter  rebuke  than  to 
have  any  guest  or  even  chance  caller  go  out 


The  Supreme  Luxury  of  Life.         67 

from  tlie  portals  with  the  feeling  that  he  is 
sorry  that  he  came,  —  that  he  is  depressed 
rather  than  uplifted,  saddened  rather  than 
gladdened,  and  in  the  mood  of  discord  rather 
than  that  of  harmony.  For  all  personal  as- 
sociation, whether  permanent  or  transient, 
whether  prearranged  or  a  matter  of  acciden- 
tal contact,  should  leave  behind  it  a  lingering 
charm,  as  of  something  sweet  and  gracious,  — 
a  deeper  sense  of  the  possible  exaltations  and 
loveliness  of  life.  When  any  meeting  does 
not  do  this,  some  one  is  to  blame.  One  or 
both  is  not  giving  of  his  best,  and  not  to  do 
this  is  a  wrong  to  society  in  general.  N"o  one 
is  livinoj  arisfht  unless  he  so  lives  that  who- 
ever  meets  him  goes  away  more  confident  and 
joyous  for  the  contact.  Faith  in  all  ultimate 
good  should  be  so  vital  that  it  can  communi- 
cate itself,  as  with  a  vibratory  impulse,  to 
others.  There  should  be  such  gladness  and 
joy  in  life  that  all  may  partake  of  it.  "  There 
are  some  men  and  women  in  whose  company 
WG  are  always  at  our  best,"  says  Dr.  Drum- 
moud.     '^  While  with  them  we  cannot  think 


68  The  World  Beautiful 

mean  thoughts,  or  speak  ungenerous  words. 
Their  mere  presence  is  elevation,  purification, 
sanctity.  All  the  best  stops  in  our  nature  are 
drawn  out  by  their  intercourse,  and  we  find 
music  in  our  souls  that  was  never  there 
before." 

Now,  it  is  not  only  a  possible  ideal  in  life 
to  conceive  of  evolving  harmonies  of  spirit  in 
this  way ;  it  is  the  absolute  Christian  duty  of 
every  thouglitful  man  or  woman.  It  is  a 
simple  obligation  laid  on  every  one, — 

"  To  make  the  world  within  his  reach, 
Somewhat  the  better  for  his  being, 
And  gladder  for  his  human  speech." 

To  attain  this  art  of  living  is  to  attain  hap- 
piness. It  is  only  a  matter  of  spiritual  seren- 
ity and  exaltation.  Be  glad  in  the  Lord ;  that 
is,  so  find  your  environment  in  aspiration  and 
generous  out-giving  that  you  may  live  and 
breathe  and  have  your  being  in  this  magnetic 
atmosphere  of  sweetness  and  joy.  Experience 
it  and  radiate  it. 

There  is  no  mental  attitude  more  disastrous 


The  Supreme  Luxury  of  Life.         69 

to  personal  achievement,  personal  happiness, 
and  personal  usefulness  to  others  than  that 
of  despondency.  *'  I  will  expect  nothing/' — 
of  that  nothing  comes ;  it  is  spiritual  suicide 
and  intellectual  negation.  "  I  will  expect 
everything :  I  will  believe  and  be  glad  in  the 
untold  richness  of  life," —  of  that  comes  every- 
thing. Faith  creates  the  conditions  in  which 
the  noble  purpose  may  take  root  and  grow ; 
but  we  utterly  neutralize  all  our  own  poten- 
tialities by  doubt  and  despondency. 

It  is  a  law  of  science  that  sound  cannot 
travel  through  a  vacuum,  —  the  sound  waves 
require  the  atmospheric  conditions  for  their 
vibration;  and  this  may  serve  as  an  analogy 
that  through  the  spiritual  vacuum  made  by 
unfaith  no  divine  aid  can  pass. 

It  is  love  that  is  life,  —  so  much  love,  so 
much  vitality.  It  is  measure  for  measure. 
The  only  life  that  is  found  is  the  life  that  is 
lost.  If  one  would  be  happy,  let  him  forget 
himself  and  go  about  making  some  one  else 
happy. 

"  Is  not  the  life  more  than  meat  ? " 


70  The  World  Beautiful 

The  life  is  so  infinitely  above  being  made 
or  marred  by  material  things  that  one  almost 
marvels  at  the  esteem,  the  actual  reverence, 
indeed,  in  which  mere  things  are  held. 
"  ThiDgs  are  in  the  saddle, 
And  ride  mankind," 

lamented  Emerson.  But  one  may  refuse  to 
be  ridden  by  things,  he  may  refuse  material 
limitations  and  denials ;  he  may  assert  his 
integral  power  of  spiritual  potency.  So  en- 
tirely is  the  giving  way  to  despondency  a 
species  of  spiritual  suicide  that  one  should 
regard  the  tendency  in  himself  as  one  of  act- 
ual and  positive  wrong.  There  is  a  sensitive- 
ness that  is  very  nearly  akin  to  selfisliness. 
It  is  the  self-centred,  the  self-contemplating 
quality,  not  infrequently  met  in  refined  na- 
tures, but  one  that  is  still  incompatible  with 
the  best  quality  of  life.  Personal  happiness 
comes,  not  by  seeking  it  specifically,  but  by 
seeking  that  nobler  quality  of  living  that  pro- 
duces it  as  a  result. 

Let  one  lay  hold  on  life,  —  the  life  of  the 
spirit.     Let  him  rejoice  in  the  Lord.      The 


The  Supreme  Luxury  of  Life.         71 

term  is  not  a  mere  rhetorical  figure ;  it  is  lit- 
eral and  true.  The  Lord  is  the  giver  of  life  ; 
in  his  presence  are  joy  and  exaltation.  The 
life  of  materiality  is  friction  and  discord  and 
depression.  The  life  of  the  spirit  is  joy  and 
peace  and  exaltation,  —  the  charmed  life. 
And  the  test  is  "  not  religiousness,  but  Love," 
the  life  of  love.  The  test  is  to  diffuse  around 
one  joy  and  gladness  and  uplift  of  spirit,  —  to 
evolve  the  nobler  harmonies  of  life. 


OUR   SOCIAL  SALVATION. 

We  are  not  strong  by  our  power  to  penetrate,  but 
by  our  relatedness.  The  world  is  enlarged  for  us,  not 
by  new  objects,  but  by  finding  more  affinities  and  po- 
tencies in  those  we  have.  ...  It  is  not  talent,  but 
sensibility  which  is  best :  talent  confines,  but  the  cen- 
tral life  puts  us  in  relation  to  all.  .  .  .  Feel  yourself, 
and  be  not  daunted  by  things.  —  Emerson. 


EXCLUSIVEXESS  AND  INCLUSIYE- 

NESS.      . 


]T  is  frequently  remarked  that  a  cer- 
tain individual  is  "very  exclusive; " 
or  that  certain  society,  supposed  to 
comprehend  within  itself  many  dc 
sirable  qualities,  is  "  a  very  exclusive  society." 
The  expression  is  invariably  held  to  be  of  the 
most  complimentary  nature  imaginable,  and 
the  grande  dame  who  could  achieve  the  repu- 
tation of  being  the  most  exclusive  of  her  time 
was  the  grandest  dame  of  all ! 

Still  more  remarkable  was  a  local  article  on 
Old  Trinity,  New  York,  in  the  columns  of 
the  "  New  York  Herald,"  in  which  the  writer 
evidently  intended  to  express  himself  in  the 
most  complimentary  terms  regarding  this 
church,  and  he  therefore  described  it  as  "  the 
most  wealthy  and  exclusive  church  in  New 
York." 


76  The  World  Beautiful 

But  why  ^'  exclusive  *'  ?  the  average  reader 
would  inquire.  Is  the  ministry  of  the  gospel 
to  be  judged  by  a  curious  social  standard  that 
holds  up  ^tTclusiveness  rather  than  2/2clusive- 
ness  as  a  cardinal  virtue?  And  whom  does 
it  exclude  ?  Is  it  the  poor  only  wlio  are  ex- 
cluded, because  it  is,  as  its  chronicler  de- 
scribes, a  "  wealthy "  church  ?  Or  is  it  the 
absolutely  sinful  and  immoral  who  are  ex- 
cluded from  the  teaching  of  Him  who  declares 
that  He  came  to  save  sinners?  Or  is  it  the 
ill-clad  or  the  ill-bred,  or  the  people  who, 
though  sufficiently  wtII- to-do,  and  well-clad 
and  well-bred,  are  still  not  "  in  society  "  ?  It 
would  be  interesting  to  learn  just  wdiat  people 
or  class  of  people  are  excluded  by  an  "ex- 
clusive "  church. 

The  attribute  of  exclusfveness  has  for  a 
long  time  masqueraded  under  the  highest  and 
choicest  pretensions.  Is  it  not  time  to  prick 
the  bubble  of  a  most  absurd  fallacy,  —  of  one 
utterly  out  of  keeping  with  the  spirit  of  the 
age,  one  at  variance  with  every  Christian 
grace   and   every   better    impulse    of    gentle 


Excliisiveness  and  Indusiteness,       77 

breeding,  and  show  it  for  what  it  is,  —  as  a 
term  denoting  defective  social  sympathy,  lim- 
ited intellect,  absurd  pretension,  and  colossal 
conceit. 

To  be  exclusive  is  to  exclude.  Now,  the 
note  of  the  day,  in  all  its  higher  and  nobler 
trend  of  thought,  is  to  include,  to  share,  to 
communicate. 

When  will  arise  the  grande  dame  of  society 
sufficiently  secure  in  her  grandeur  to  assume 
the  i?iclusive  rather  than  the  ea:?clusive  posi- 
tion, —  one  whose  social  aspirations  will  take 
the  form  of  outgoing  generous  sympathies  and 
liberal  recognition  and  sunny  stimulus,  —  one 
of  whom  her  admirers  will  say,  as  the  highest 
praise  they  can  bestow,  that  she  ''is  one  of 
the  most  mclusive  women  of  society "  ? 

The  truth  is  that  any  one  can  be  ^a^clusive. 
It  requires,  to  be  sure,  a  petty  brain,  and  a 
cold  and  narrow  heart,  and  a  lack  of  sympa- 
thy and  imagination,  and  a  very  distorted  and 
exaggerated  opinion  of  one's  self;  still,  all 
these  qualities  can  be  cultivated,  if  this  is 
the  true  social  ideal  to  be  held  before  human- 


78  'The  World  Beautiful 

ity,  and  their  successful  cultivation  by  all  the 
communicants  of  a  ^'  wealthy  and  exclusive 
church  "  would  doubtless  enable  the  church 
itself  to  become  most  highly  and  rigidly  ex- 
clusive. The  only  question  is,  Is  this  the 
true  ideal  ? 

Emerson  has  remarked  that  "  exclusiveness 
excludes  itself"  xVll  that  we  keep  out,  we 
go  without.  If  we  admit  no  one,  we  deprive 
ourselves  of  every  one.  If  we  admit  a  few, 
in  order  that  we  may  lay  that  flattering  unc- 
tion of  exclusiveness  to  our  souls,  we  ex- 
clude the  many.  Cui  bono  ?  Or  on  the  plane 
of  the  intellectual  rather  than  the  pluto- 
cratic aristocracy,  is  there  do  pleasure  in  the 
society  of  people  who  have  not  written  a 
book  ?  It  takes,  or  rather  it  should  take,  —  it 
is  not  safe  to  assert  that  it  invariably  does,  — 
some  good  degree  of  knowledge  to  write ; 
but  there  is  much  to  be  said  for  that  portion 
of  the  community  who  know  enough  not  to 
write  a  book.  On  the  whole,  literature  does 
not  comprehend  within  itself  all  the  intellect 
of  the  world  nor  all  the  intellectual  activity. 


Exchisiveness  and  Inclusiveness.       79 

There  is  a  great  universal  love  which  the 
world  only  dimly  comprehends.  There  is  a 
transcendent  greatness  of  life  into  which  every 
soul  may  and  should  enter.  There  is  the 
joy  of  possessing,  and  the  infinitely  greater 
joy  of  sharing  all  spiritual  possessions.  If 
you  have  greater  knowledge,  better  manners, 
finer  culture,  do  not  exclude  those  who 
have  less,  but  include  and  share,  and  thus 
find  in  it  its  divinest  sweetness.  Exclusive- 
ness  is  the  attribute  of  the  barbarian,  the  sav,- 
age,  or  the  defective  person.  Why  should  it 
be  affected  by  those  whose  greatest  glory 
should  lie  in  the  inclusiveness  of  all  human 
aid  and  human  affections ! 

And  all  absolute  judgment  of  people  is  er- 
roneous, because  character  is  an  ever-living  and 
ever-growing  force.  The  man  who  was  un- 
worthy five  years  ago  may  be  most  worthy 
to-day,  and  he  may  have  been  enabled  to  attain 
a  state  of  worthiness  by  means  of  one  who  did 
not  pose  as  an  exclusive,  but  wliose  noble 
convictions  and  generous  ardor  led  him  "to 
condense  and  crystallize  into  the  uses  of  daily 
life  the  teachings  of  Christ." 


80  The  World  Beautiful. 

Is  it  not  true  that  it  is  not  exclusiveness 
wliich  is  great,  but  rather  the  power  to  so 
touch  and  inspire  the  best  qualities  of  others, 
to  develop  and  quicken  these,  that  they 
shall  grow  worthy  of  i^clusiveness  ?  Even  to 
be  common  is  less  vulgar  than  to  be  snobbish ; 
to  be  capable  of  appreciation  and  reverence 
is  higher  than  to  be  only  capable  of  severe 
criticism ;  to  give  always  of  one's  best,  —  these 
are  the  qualities  that  most  unvaryingly  char- 
acterize the  spirits  finely  touched  but  to  fine 
issues. 

All  the  same  it  is  true  that  while  errors, 
faults,  even  crimes,  may  be  forgiven  and  con- 
doned, a  defect  in  taste  cannot  be.  This 
may  seem  on  the  surface  a  flippant  and  su- 
perficial thing  to  say,  and  something  to  be 
tolerated  only  as  a  paradox,  —  a  sentiment,  in- 
deed, that,  looked  at  seriously  and  rationally, 
has  not  sufficient  consistency  for  cohesion ; 
but  a  deeper  consideration  will  reveal  its 
eternal  truth. 

A  fault  of  taste,  either  in  language  or  man- 
ner, is  rooted  in   personality.     It  is  the  ex- 


Exclusiveness  and  Inclusiveness,       81 

tcriial  manifestation  of  an  internal  defect.  It 
reaches  back  into  heredity,  environment,  in- 
dividuality. It  is  not  the  result  of  an  impulse  f 
of  the  moment,  of  a  flash  of  temper,  or  some  I 
erratic  and  temporary  emotion  ;  it  is  simply  a 
tiling  that  reveals  the  grain  of  life,  its  very 
quality. 

There  is  something  in  being  too  fine  for  the 
world's  coarser  uses,  too  fastidious  for  asso- 
ciations that  jar  on  the  more  delicate  and 
exacting  sense  of  the  external  fitness  of 
tilings.  Such  a  temperament  should  have  its 
due  respect,  and  perhaps  may  well  be  allowed 
to  see  its  visions  and  to  dream  its  dreams.  To 
attain  its  own  individual  possibilities  it  abso- 
lutely requires  a  certain  amount  of  guarding 
and  shielding  from  ruder  forces,  and  it  is  use- 
less to  call  on  it  for  the  heroic,  for  that  is  not 
in  its  metier. 

But  while  such  a  nature  should  have  its  due 
respect,  it  is  not  entitled  to  an  undue  portion. 
Its  defects  are  not  to  be  mistaken  for  some 
finer  and  more  or  less  incomprehensible  kind  of 
virtues.     To  be  unable  to  bear  any  degree  of 


82  The  World  Beautiful. 

-  ■  ■ — — ■  ■—    11^ 

average  contact  with  the  world  is  not,  neces- 
sarily, to  be  altogether  superior  to  the  world. 
It  depends.  It  is  a  great  misfortune  to  any 
one  to  conceive  and  cherish  the  idea  that  he 
is  not  as  other  men  are ;  that  he  is  of  finer 
clay  and  of  a  superior  order  of  nature,  and 
requires  certain  special  dispensations  of  life 
and  a  particular  ordering  of  events  in  relation 
to  himself  to  enable  him  to  endure  this  mortal 
pilgrimage  at  all.  It  is  a  misfortune,  first, 
because  it  is  difficult  to  persuade  a  sufficient 
number  of  persons  of  this  conviction  to  insure 
the  desired  comfort  of  his  life :  and,  secondly, 
because,  if  a  large  proportion,  or  even  all 
with  whom  he  comes  in  contact  were  so  per- 
suaded, it  would  so  isolate  him  in  an  atmos- 
phere of  selfishness  that  his  better  nature 
w^ould  be  absolutely  stifled  and  dwarfed,  and 
in  time  killed,  —  if  that  immortal  part  of  us 
which  is  our  better  nature  can  die.  There 
is  not,  however,  nmch  danger  that  a  very 
alarming  proportion  of  humanity  will  unite  in 
this  view  of  the  being  who  feels  himself  alien 
to  them ;  and  such  a  belief  on  his  own  part. 


Exclusiveness  and  Inchmveness.       83 

unsupported  by  others,  produces  a  scarcely 
veiled  antagonism  which  sets  one  ajar  with 
life.  It  hinders  his  best  development,  and  is 
a  serious  barrier  to  his  usefulness.  There  is  a 
sense  in  which  fastidiousness  and  selfishness 
are  almost  synonymous. 

This  question,  indeed,  involves  a  problem 
which  is  of  a  very  practical  nature.  The  so- 
cial life  of  the  day  —  using  the  term  "  soci- 
ety "  in  its  large  and  general  sense  —  is 
tending  more  and  more  to  organization. 
There  is  no  idea,  no  theory  held  that  does 
not  immediately  become  the  nucleus  of  some 
club  or  society.  Those  who  support  the  idea 
or  the  cause  naturally  gravitate  to  it,  and  the 
hourly  proverb  about  the  strange  companions 
that  poverty  makes  applies  as  well  to  the 
singularly  incompatible  personal  associations 
often  enforced  by  means  of  A's  and  B's  devo- 
tion to  the  same  idea. 

Now  it  is  very  possible  to  have  a  true  en- 
thusiasm for  ameliorating  the  condition  of  the 
Jews  in  Russia,  or  exterminating  the  saloon 
from  the  face  of  the  earth,  or  giving  lovely 


84  The  World  Beautiful 

woman  the  ballot,  or  to  place  the  railroads  of 
the  nation  under  government  control  without 
being  precisely  able  to  love  your  neighbor  as 
yourself,  —  or,  at  least,  to  love  all  your  neigh- 
bors as  yourself,  —  simply  because  they,  too, 
have  sympathetic  fervors  towards  the  Russian 
Jews,  and  hold  convictions  regarding  the  duty 
of  the  government. 

In  the  clubs  formed  purely  on  the  intellect- 
ual or  literary  basis,  there  is  a  strong  pre- 
sumption of  sympathy  in  the  beginning. 
People  who  unite  in  liking  Dante  must  have 
a  good  deal  in  common  witli  each  other. 
Those  who  are  drawn  together  by  a  common 
desire  to  pursue  literary  culture  in  this  form 
are  those  that  have  mutual  tastes  and  appre- 
ciations to  a  great  degree. 

Not  necessarily  is  this  true  of  the  workers 
for  some* great  reform.  Emerson  and  Mrs. 
Childs  have  told  us  of  the  ludicrous  incongru- 
ity of  the  antislavery  workers,  whose  ranks 
included  Garrison  and  Phillips  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  most  extraordinary  specimens 
of  humanity  on  the  other  hand.     What  then  ? 


Exclusiveness  and  Inclusiveness,       85 

Does  the  refined  and  courtly  and  polished 
Phillips  withdraw  from  a  cause  he  holds  sa- 
cred because  he  is  partly  supported  in  the 
company  of  boors?     Assuredly  not. 

For  while  there  is  much  to  be  said,  and 
due  recognition  to  be  given,  to  the  refinement 
that  is  too  fine  for  crude  and  common  contact, 
there  is  more  to  be  said  for  that  refinement 
which  is  so  fine  that  it  can  go  among  the 
coarsest,  which  is  so  perfected  that  it  can 
endure  and  withstand  and  indeed  be  imper- 
vious to  any  rudeness  or  crudeness ;  a  refine- 
ment that  is  not  a  merely  decorative  attribute 
of  character,  but  that  can  go  into  the  coarse 
and  common  life  and  inspire  it  with  a  sugges- 
tion of  something  better,  —  that  can  spiritual- 
ize all  with  which  it  comes  in  contact. 

Fastidiousness,  that  left  alone  degenerates 
into  selfishness  and  aloofness,  is,  when  in- 
spired by  the  enthusiasm  for  humanity,  re- 
deemed to  the  refinement  that  lifts  up  others 
to  its  own  high  level. 

Surely  it  is  better  to  go  into  the  highway 
and  the  byway,  and  love  men,  and  serve  them, 


86  The  World  Beautiful 

and  contribute  an  endeavor,  be  it  much  or 
little,  to  make  tlie  world  a  better  place  than 
it  is  to  wrap  ourselves  in  the  mantle  of  a 
fondly  fancied  superiority,  and  reject  all  con- 
tact with  the  great  and  the  common  daily 
currents  of  life. 


Through        There  is  a  profound  truth  at  the 
Scorning    i^^tt^j^^  ^f  ^i^^^  Browning's  asser- 

NotMng. 

tion  that  — 

*'  Poets  become  such 
Through  scorniug  nothing." 

There  is  no  quality  which  is  more  corrosive 
to  all  true  life  or  endeavor  than  that  of  con- 
tempt. Nor  does  it  spring  from  any  supe- 
riority of  character  or  gifts,  however  fondly 
one  who  manifests  it  may  lay  that  flattering 
unction  to  his  soul.  Contempt  is  not  tlie 
product  of  spiritual  aftluencc,  but  of  spirit- 
ual poverty.  It  is  the  great  nature,  not  the 
narrow  one,  that  is  keenest  in  discernment 
and  that  is  most  swift  to  recognize  all  that  is 
fine  or  noble  in  any  effort.     There  is  no  criti- 


Through  Scorning  Nothing.  87 

cisrn  so  severe,  so  carping,  as  that  of  the  per- 
son who  could  least  accomplish  the  work  he 
views  with  such  disdain.  So  true  is  this  that 
absolute  denunciation  is  almost  invariably  the 
product  of  absolute  ignorance. 

There  is  a  phrase  much  in  use  in  the  world 
of  letters,  that  of  creative  criticism.  It  is  a 
branch  of  literary  art  second  only  to  that  of 
poetry ;  and  when  a  literary  review  or  art 
criticism  is  written  by  a  master  in  this  phase 
of  expression,  the  reader  gains  not  only  a  clear 
and  discriminative  idea  of  the  work  discussed, 
but  also  much  collateral  knowledge  of  a  posi- 
tive kind.  The  merely  negative  writing  that 
points  out  errors  or  failures  is  of  little  value  in 
comparison  with  the  positive  kind  that,  while 
revealing  these,  also  discloses  the  accompany- 
ing excellences,  and  the  means  and  measures 
of  a  true  success. 

The  analogy  holds  true  in  life.  The  critic 
of  character  who  can  only  point  out  weak- 
ness and  mistaken  endeavor  is,  at  most,  of  a 
negative  value  in  progress.  If  to  the  keen 
vision  for  defects  he  adds  contempt  for  the 


88  The  World  Beautiful 

defects  he  discovers,  his  criticism  on  life  has 
the  effect  to  paralyze  human  endeavor.  It 
requires  some  ability  to  see  reasons  for  doubt ; 
but  it  always  requires  more  ability,  and  that 
of  a  higher  order,  to  see  reasons  for  belief. 

It  is  an  important  factor  in  social  harmony 
to  learn  to  accept  people  for  what  they  are, 
rather  than  to  find  fault  because  they  are  not 
something  else.  You  may  be,  at  times,  bored 
by  the  too  ardent  devotion  and  profuse  de- 
monstrations of  a  rcGfard  which  clothes  itself 
in  all  variety  of  material  forms,  and  showers 
upon  you  an  accumulating  avalanche  of  vis- 
ible remembrances.  You  grow  tired  of  too 
great  subjectivity,  and  long  for  the  plane  of 
the  rational  and  the  impersonal.  And  still 
the  emotional  warmth  of  friendship  is  not  so 
common  that  one  can  afford  to  banish  it  or 
altogetlicr  ignore  its  claims.  The  ideal  friend, 
who  blends  the  wide  outlook  on  life  and  ac- 
tivity in  its  larger  and  more  permanent  inter- 
est with  the  liigher  possibilities  of  personal 
thought  and  tenderness,  is  too  rare  to  serve 
as  a  prototype.     One  extreme  is  found  in  one 


TJirough  Scorning  Nothing,  89 

person  and  the  other  in  some  one  else,  and 
rarely  are  they  united  in  the  same  nature.  But 
there  is  wisdom  in  accepting  people  as  we  do 
pictures,  and  placing  them  in  the  right  light. 

There  are  few  characters  or  few  pursuits 
that  will  excite  the  contempt  of  one  who 
views  them  seriously,  and  sees  them  in  their 
larger  relation  to  life  as  a  whole.  Character 
is  not  a  fixed  and  definite  creation,  —  that  is, 
at  any  time  ever  made,  —  but  it  is  always 
making.  It  is  continually  in  evolution. 
There  are  usually  latent  possibilities  to  be 
considered.  There  is  always  the  possible 
inflorescence. 

The  mental  attitude  of  contempt  towards 
any  phase  of  human  activity  not  only  re- 
presses or  even  paralyzes  the  energy  of  its 
object,  but  it  is  almost  equally  fatal,  too,  to 
one  who  habitually  cultivates  this  state  of 
reflection.  It  is  only  abounding  love  and 
trust  and  faith  that  produce  abounding  en- 
ergy. To  him  who  believes  in  nothing,  noth- 
ing can  exist.  It  is  the  exhaustion  of  the 
spiritual  atmosphere. 


90  The  World  Beautiful 

«  «  «  ¥  ^ 

The  Woman  The  woman  of  the  world  and 
of  the  \\^Q  worldly  woman  wear  their  rue 
^^  with  a  difference.  Between  them 
there  is  a  great  gulf  fixed,  —  a  gulf  that  sepa- 
rates worldly  knowledge  from  worldly  ambition. 
Worldly  knowledge  is  desirable  ;  worldly  am- 
bition is  despicable.  The  one  may  be,  and 
should  be,  noble  ;  the  other  could,  by  no  trick 
of  transformation,  be  other  than  ignoble. 
Worldly  knowledge  is  safety.  A  life  without 
it  is  left  largely  adrift  to  the  chance  forces 
of  destiny. 

*'  They  shall  safely  steer  who  see." 

And  sight  is  always  better  than  blindness. 
Ignorance  and  innocence  are  not  altogether 
synonymous.      The   innocence   of  knowledge 

is  hififher. 

''Blind  endeavor  is  not  wise  ; 
Wisdom  enters  through  the  eyes, 
And  the  seer  is  the  knower,  — 
Is  the  doer  and  the  sower." 

By  the   truer  interpretation  a   woman   of 
the  world  is  not  a  worldly  woman  at  all.     It 


The  Woman  of  the  World.  91 

requires  far  higher  qualities  than  the  selfish- 
ness and  materialism  that  make  the  worldly 
woman,  to  make  one  whose  breadth  of  view, 
liberal  sympatliies,  mental  poise,  and  felici- 
tous judgment  fit  her  to  be  a  woman  of  the 
world.  It  is  she  who  is  the  leader  in  all  good 
works.  It  is  she  who  perceives  needs  and 
comprehends  the  relative  importance  of  events. 
Her  horizon  is  wide,  her  insight  swift  as 
light  and  as  unerring,  and  her  sentiment  never 
degenerates  into  mere  sentimentality.  She  is 
a  woman  who  can  think  as  well  as  feel,  and 
who  lives  in  the  clear  upper  air  of  intellec- 
tual greatness.  A  knowledge  of  the  funda- 
mental forces  of  life,  of  its  finer  possibilities 
and  larger  worth,  saves  her  from  the  emo- 
tional plane  of  fanaticism.  She  acts  from 
reason  and  intelligence,  and  has  sufficient 
experience  or  intuition  —  the  one  apt  to  be 
true  as  the  other  —  to  realize  that  the  good 
of  others  is,  for  the  most  part,  to  be  achieved 
incidentally  rather  than  by  any  direct  and  spe- 
cific effort.  The  individual  who  sets  out  with 
a  conscious  purpose  to  do  good,  rather  than 


92  The  World  Becmtifid. 

fulfil  his  initial  duty  to  he  good,  is  apt  to  de- 
generate into  a  prig  and  a  bore.  It  is  much 
the  wiser  course  to  strengthen  and  build  up 
the  good  than  it  is  to  denounce  the  evil.  To 
help  people  to  help  themselves,  rather  than 
increase  their  dependence  by  emotional  re- 
grets, is  far  the  more  effective. 

The  worldly  woman  has  no  permanent 
place  in  social  life ;  she  is  kaleidoscopic 
and  unstable.  Self-interest  is  a  poor  anchor ; 
but  it  is  all  the  one  she  has,  and  a  corre- 
sponding insecurity  of  character  is  the  result. 
One  only  lives  worthily  by  living  for  some- 
thing higher  than  immediate  personal  con- 
cerns. Tlie  mere  worldly  ambition,  even 
when  realized,  is  a  kind  of  Dead  Sea  fruit, 
that  turns  to  ashes  at  the  touch. 

But  a  knowledge  of  the  world  is  essential 
to  a  wise  use  and  direction  of  life.  It  is  this 
which  gives  vision  ;  and  by  vision  one  looks 
forward  and  attracts  new  and  potent  forces 
of  growth.  Thought  is  the  one  potent  force. 
The  woman  of  the  world,  with  wide  knowl- 
edge and  fine  culture,  recognizes  this  spiritual 


The  Potency  of  Charm,  93 

law,  while  the  worldly  woman  knows  only 
the  present  hour,  and  has  no  vision  of  the 
larger  destinies. 

***** 

Tiie  The  quality  of  charm  is  the  most 

°  ^^^^    potent  of  any  characteristic  of  hu- 
of  Charm.     ^       .  "^ 

manity  and  the  least  definable.  It 
is  that  which  is  most  swiftly  perceived  and 
most  impossible  to  describe.  It  is  neither  the 
direct  result  of  learning  or  goodness  or  accom- 
plishments, nor  any  specific  gift  or  grace,  and 
still  it  includes  the  essential  element  in  all 
these.  There  are  persons  who  may  possess 
every  cardinal  virtue,  so  far  as  known,  but 
whose  lack  of  the  one  quality  of  charm  renders 
all  else  without  value  to  one  susceptible  to 
this  finer  art.  Charm  is  temperamental.  It 
is  born,  and  not  made.  It  is  a  gift,  not  an 
acquirement,  and  is  developed  by  fine  influ- 
ences in  early  life.  Associations  in  the  im- 
pressionable period  of  childhood  and  early 
youth  leave  their  ineffaceable  stamp.  In  so 
far  as  the  individual  possesses  the  ideal  and 


94  The  World  Beautiful. 

the  artistic  temperament,  the  poetic  and  im- 
aginative as  distinguished  from  that  which 
is  merely  aesthetic  and  clever,  so  far  he  pos- 
sesses this  magic  gift  of  charm.  The  prac- 
tical and  executive  type  of  people  may  be,  and 
often  are,  entitled  to  respect,  consideration,  — 
what  one  will;  but  they  are  fatally  lacking 
in  the  element  that  transcends  all  virtues  or 
acquirements  in  its  magic  potency.  The  great 
defect  in  the  education  of  the  day  is  a  pre- 
dominant tendency  to  the  utilitarian  basis :  as 
if  doing  were,  in  some  mysterious  way,  higher 
tlian  being.  Nothing  is  more  remote  from 
the  truth.  A  little  margin  for-  the  stillness 
and  leisure  of  growth  —  the  time  to  think  — 
is  the  only  corrective  for  the  rush  and  stress 
of  practical  life.  The  life  of  a  certain  type  of 
individuals  —  wlio  subsist  on  public  meetings, 
committee  consultations,  cast-iron  and  well- 
regulated  work  in  the  charities,  and  strongly 
defined  theories  of  education  —  is  the  life  of 
penal  servitude.  There  is  no  room  left  in  it 
for  the  grace  and  poetry  and  exaltation  of 
living.      Specific    public    duties    have    their 


The  Potency  of  Charm.  95 

place ;  but  it  is,  after  all,  in  the  private  life  of 
the  day,  in  the  more  personal  influences  and 
immediate  relations,  that  the  chief  concern 
lies.  To  idealize  this  daily  life  and  to  make  it 
worth  idealizing  is  the  secret  of  that  myste- 
rious attraction  called  charm.  What  is  meant 
by  culture,  says  Mr.  Mai  lock,  is  seen  in  one 
"  on  whom  none  of  the  finer  flavors  of  life  are 
lost;  who  can  appreciate,  sympathize  with,  crit- 
icise all  the  scenes,  situations,  sayings,  or  ac- 
tions around  him,  —  a  sad  or  happy  love  affair, 
a  charm  of  manner  and  conversation,  a  beau- 
tiful sunset,  or  a  social  absurdity.  ...  I  don't 
call  a  woman  cultivated  who  bothers  me  at 
dinner  first  with  discussing  this  book  and 
then  that,  —  whose  one  perpetual  question 
is,  ^  Have  you  read  So-and-so  ?  '  But  I  call 
a  woman  cultivated  who  responds,  and  who 
knows  what  I  mean,  as  we  pass  naturally 
from  subject  to  subject ;  who  by  a  flash  or  a 
softness  in  her  eyes,  by  a  slight  gesture  of  the 
hand,  by  a  sigh,  by  a  flush  in  the  cheek, 
makes  me  feel  as  I  talk  of  some  lovely  scene 
that  she  too  could  love  it,  —  as  I  speak  of  love 


96  The  World  Beautiful 

or  sorrow,  makes  me  feel  that  she  herself  has 
known  them ;  as  I  speak  of  ambition,  or  en- 
nui, or  hope,  or  remorse,  or  loss  of  character, 
that  all  these  are  not  mere  names  to  her,  but 
things.  The  aim  of  culture  is  to  make  the 
soul  a  musical  instrument  which  maj  yield 
music  either  to  itself  or  to  others,  at  any  im- 
pulse from  without ;  and  the  more  elaborate 
the  culture,  the  richer  and  more  composite  the 
music.  .  .  .  The  aim  of  culture  is  to  make  us 
better  company  as  men  and  women  of  tlie 
world.  ...  A  woman  may  have  had  all  kinds 
of  experience,  —  society,  sorrow,  love,  travel, 
remorse,  distraction,  —  and  yet  she  may  not 
be  cultivated.  She  may  never  have  recog- 
nized what  her  life  has  been.  To  turn  this 
raw  material  into  culture,  we  must  come  to 
art,  to  poetry.  Poetry  is  the  developing  solu- 
tion of  life.  It  is  that  magic  mirror  in  wliich 
we  see  our  life  surrounded  with  issues  view- 
less to  the  common  eye.  The  smell  of  au- 
tumn woods,  the  color  of  dying  fern,  may  turn 
by  a  subtle  transubstantiation  into  pleasures 
and  forces   fcliat  will  never  come  again,  —  a 


Fine  Souls  and  Fine  Society.         97 

red  sunset  and  a  windy  seashore  into  a  last 
farewell,  and  the  regret  of  a  lifetime.  .  .  . 
This  is  using  poetry  in  its  widest  sense,  as 
inclusive  of  all  imaginative  literature  and 
other  art  as  well."  It  is  in  just  this  sense  of 
responsiveness  that  the  gift  of  charm  lies.  It 
is  mental  and  spiritual  vitality.  The  individ- 
ual with  this  magic  of  charm  will  kindle  and 
stimulate  all  around,  and  inspire  new  and 
finer  realizations  of  ideal  life,  w^hile  it  can  no 
more  be  defined  than  can  the  scent  or  the 
color  of  the  rose^  or  the  exhilaration  of  Octo- 
ber sunshine. 

"  I  hold  it  of  little  matter 
Whether  your  jewel  be  of  pure  water, 
A  rose  diamond  or  a  white, 
But  whether  it  dazzle  me  with  light. 


Whether  you  charm  me. 
Bid  my  bread  feed,  aud  my  fire  warm  me." 

¥^  7^  ¥^  ^  ^ 

Fine  Souls       Emerson's  assertion  that  "  it  is 

and  Fine    i\^q  f^y^Q  souls  who  serve  us,  and 

°""  ^'     not  what  is  called  fine  society,"  is 

a  refreshing  assurance  to  fall  back  upon ;  for 

7 


98  The  ^Yorld  Beautiful 

when  life  degenerates  into  an  idolatry  of  the 
senses,  a  worship  of  material  good,  and  is  con- 
trolled only  by  the  sovereignty  of  selfishness, 
its  divine  aim  is  irrevocably  lost  miless  some 
achievement  in  the  line  of  duty  or  sacrifice 
shall  restore  it  to  the  sphere  of  high  thouglit. 
Mr.  Mallock  once  wittily  remarked  that  it 
used  to  be  considered  an  attribute  of  the  low- 
est savages  not  to  believe  in  a  God ;  but  it 
would  apparently  soon  be  considered  an  attri- 
bute of  savasre  life  to  believe  in  one.  This  ob- 
servation  was  made  several  years  ago ;  but  its 
latest  application  seems  to  be  not  only  inclu- 
sive of  the  religious,  but  also  of  the  moral  atti- 
tude in  contemporary  life,  in  which  belief,  faith, 
conviction,  are  rigidly  ruled  out,  and  external 
pleasure  is  the  aim  pursued.  There  is  a  curi- 
ous anomaly  presented  in  the  fact  that  in  that 
portion  of  the  community  which  arrogates  to 
itself  the  term  "  society,"  the  attitude  toward 
life  in  its  aims  and  aspects  is  as  material,  as 
crude,  as  ignoble  as  could  be  found  among 
the  poor  and  the  ignorant  class.  We  see  a 
certain  portion  of  the  comnmnity  whom  vast 


Fine  Souls  and  Fine  Society.         99 

wealth  has  emancipated  from  necessities  of 
toil ;  who  hold  the  two  greatest  factors  of  in- 
dividual development  and  rational  progress,  — 
leisure  and  freedom.  All  opportunities  for  the 
noblest  culture,  the  most  extended  and  refined 
achievements,  are  open  to  them.  Society  it- 
self, in  the  highest  sense,  is  a  fine  art,  and  re- 
quires leisure  and  freedom  to  develop  its  best 
possibilities.  Yet,  as  a  matter  of  statistical 
data,  we  discover  that  fine  society  does  not 
make  fine  souls,  — that  the  great  and  enduring 
achievements  always  have  been  in  the  past, 
and  continue  to  be  in  the  present,  made  by 
people  who  are  working  under  conditions  of 
limitation  and  pressure,  who  have  to  use 
much  of  their  force  in  overcoming  the  diffi- 
culties before  they  can  reach  the  work  itself; 
while  those  persons  who  have  nothing  to  do 
but  conquer  on  the  spiritual  side  of  life  turn 
from  it  to  enofaore  in  the  trivial  and  the  mate- 
rial.  It  is  little  wonder  that  pessimism  is  the 
logical  outcome  of  a  life  given  over  to  mere 
personal  pleasure  and  spectacular  amusement. 
The  spirit  that  says,  ^'  Let  us  eat,  drink,  and 


100  The  World  Beautiful 

be  merry,  for  to-morrow  we  die,"  is  not  the 
spirit  that  is  laying  hold  on  any  of  the  things 
that  make  life  worth  the  living.  Where  life 
represents  nothing  but  the  worship  of  the  body, 
—  that  it  shall  be  well  cared  for,  well  clad, 
and  constantly  amused,  —  it  is  little  wonder 
that  there  can  be  no  convictions  of  innnortal- 
ity,  or  perhaps  hardly  the  wish  for  it.  The 
first  cause  of  all  discontent,  all  weariness,  all 
jealousy,  bitterness,  and  vanity  of  life  is  mate- 
rialism. It  is  the  corrosive  element  that  rusts 
away  all  the  pure  gold  of  energy  and  of 
aspiration. 

''  jMan  is  not  changed,"  says  ^lazzini,  "  by 
whitewashing  or  gilding  his  habitation ;  a  peo- 
ple cannot  be  regenerated  by  teaching  them 
the  worship  of  enjoyment ;  they  cannot  be 
taught  a  spirit  of  sacrifice  by  speaking  to  them 
of  material  rewards.  It  is  the  soul  which 
creates  to  itself  a  body,  the  idea  which  makes 
for  itself  a  habitation,  ...  by  devoting  him- 
self and  purifying  himself  by  good  works  and 
holy  sorrow.  It  must  not  be  said  to  him, 
Enjoy, — life  is  the  right  to  happiness;  but 


Fine  Souls  and'Fiiie  S'oMetk/':  ;\|iO\ 

rather,  Work,  —  life  is  a  duty;  do  good,  loith- 
out  thinking  of  the  consequences  to  yourself 
He  must  not  be  taught,  To  each  according  to 
his  passions  ;  but  rather,  To  each  according 
to  his  lover 

When,  out  of  the  life  of  scenic  beauty  and 
spectacular  amusement,  its  votaries  come  to 
say  :  "  Pleasure  is  all  there  is  of  life  ;  no  one 
ever  does  anything  for  any  motive  save  that 
of  vanity  and  greed ;  authors  write  only  for 
vanity  or  for  money ;  Johns  Hopkins  en- 
dows a  university  simply  for  the  selfish  pur- 
pose of  perpetuating  his  name ;  the  belle 
who  spends  hundreds  of  dollars  on  one  gown 
probably  does  more  good  than  the  philanthro- 
pist who  makes  higher  education  possible  for 
a  larger  number ;  no  life  has  any  significance, 
and  to  believe  that  one  has  a  message  to  give, 
a  work  to  do,  a  responsibility  to  meet,  is  in- 
sufferable arrogance ;  ministers  are  as  selfish 
for  greed  and  gain  as  other  men ;  the  churches 
are  nothing  but  women's  club-houses  ;  wealth 
is  the  only  rank,  and  though,  if  a  person  has 
it  not,  he  may  sometimes  be  received  by  soci- 


10'^  The  World  Beautiful 

ety,  he  never  can  be  in  society,"  —  when  such 
a  creed  as  this  is  formulated  and  expressed  in 
tlie  literal  words  given  here,  as  the  typical  views 
of  the  individual  speaking  and  of  the  leisure 
class  represented,  what  can  be  thought  of  the 
course  which  thus  eliminates  all  moral  prin- 
ciple, and  takes  from  life  all  value  of  signifi- 
cance ?  Is  this  the  outcome  of  great  fortunes, 
—  to  produce  this  ignominious  attitude,  this 
base  and  common  greed  for  enjoyment? 
How  is  this  point  of  view  any  higher  than 
the  crude  materialism  of  the  ignorant,  the 
low,  and  the  untrained  ?  Is  this  the  attitude 
out  of  which  will  come  artistic,  literary,  sci- 
entific, or  philosophical  achievement  ?  The 
question  answ^ers  itself.  Aspiration,  to  say 
nothing  of  inspiration,  is  stifled  in  such  an 
atmosphere.  Neither  learning  nor  genius  can 
arise  from  it. 

That  it  is  the  fine  souls  wdio  serve  us,  and 
not  what  is  called  fine  society,  is  not  only  emi- 
nently true,  but  a  truth  very  much  to  the 
point  in  a  practical  w\iy,  in  these  days  when 
wealth  arrogates  to  itself  the  exclusive  basis 


Fine  Souls  and  Fine  Society.        103 

of  social  life,  and  believes  that  they  wIjo  can 
build  palaces  become  thereby  princes  by  some 
occult  process  of  transubstantiation.  Yet  is 
there  nothing  more  vulgar  than  the  faith  that 
the  parvenu  becomes  a  prince  by  virtue  of 
gilded  setting.  The  true  aristocracy  of  Amer- 
ica lies  still  in  genius,  intellect,  and  culture, 
whatever  may  be  the  claim  in  the  life  of  rep- 
resentation. To  allege  that  this  or  that 
magnate  sprang  from  humble  origin  is  the 
province  of  sham  and  sui^erficiality,  and  has 
no  part  in  a  true  aristocracy.  It  is  the  direc- 
tion in  which  one's  life  is  moving,  the  range 
of  affinities  that  he  attracts,  the  quality  of  his 
nature  by  which  the  true  test  of  aristoc- 
racy falls,  and  not  in  the  least  whether  he 
was  born  in  this  condition  or  that.  To  be  ' 
born  with  refined  tastes  and  moral  instincts  is  '\ 
to  be  well  born,  whether  it  be  in  the  limited 
outward  circumstances  that  have  largely  cliar- 
acterized  the  greatest  and  noblest  in  Amer- 
ican life,  or  in  the  purple  and  fine  linen  of  i 
latter-day  luxury.  As  a  matter  of  record 
in  America,  nearly  all  permanent  greatness  has 


104  The  World  Beautiful 

originated  in  comparatively  limited  circum- 
stances, —  to  wit,  Emerson,  whose  early  life 
w\is  one  of  even  actual  privation;  Lowell, 
wliose  father  had  the  modest  comfort  of  a 
hard-w^orking  and  self-denying  minister  in 
early  days ;  Edward  Everett  Hale,  who  told 
us  in  the  "Forum"  that  he  grew  up  in  the 
days  "when  an  American  gentleman  might 
have  to  put  his  hand  to  anything,  and  there 
was  no  service  to  which  he  could  not  give  dig- 
nity, and  none  to  which  he  should  not  give 
himself  if  there  were  need."  Examples  need 
not  be  multiplied,  but  they  will  readily  recur 
to  one,  —  from  Abraham  Lincoln  reading  by 
pine  knots,  to  Howells  reading  Longfellow's 
poems  while  the  old  mill  wheezed  away. 

Fine  society  is  not  made.  It  is  not  to  be 
bought  with  a  price.  It  must  grow.  It  is 
the  result  of  evolution.  "Xoble  aims  and 
sincere  devotion  to  them,  the  highest  devel- 
opment of  mind  and  heart,  the  fine  aroma  of 
cultivation  wliich  springs  from  the  intimacy 
with  all  that  human  genius  has  achieved  in 
every  kind,  simplicity  and   integrity,  a   soul 


Fine  Souls  and  Fine  Society »         105 

whose  sweetness  overflows  in  the  manner  and 
makes  the  voice  winning  and  the  movement 
graceful,  —  here  is  the  recipe  for  fine  society  ; 
and  although  much  of  this  is  impossible  — 
as,  for  instance,  high  and  various  cultivation 
■ —  without  wealth,  yet  wealth  of  itself  cannot 
supply  the  lowest  element.  The  wealth  of  a 
foolish  man  is  a  pedestal,  which,  the  more  he 
accumulates,  elevates  him  higher,  and  reveals 
his  deformity  to  a  broader  circle.  These  most 
obvious  facts  are  rarely  remembered.  Gilded 
vulgarity  believes  itself  to  be  gold." 

When  it  arrogates  to  itself  the  exclusive 
claim  to  gold,  it  is  time  its  pretensions  were 
stripped  away,  and  its  barrenness  revealed. 
The  only  fine  society  —  that  which  is  com- 
posed of  fine  souls  —  is  exclusive,  but  not  in  a 
vulgar  way.  All  that  does  not  belong  to  it 
drops  away  by  a  spiritual  law.  All  that  does 
belong  to  it  comes  by  spiritual  gravitation. 
Fine  society  is  the  graceful,  genial,  sympa- 
thetic intercourse  of  fine  souls.  It  is  a  festi- 
val over  which  the  gods  themselves  preside. 
It  is  not  spectacular.     It  is  not  to  be  manu- 


106  The  World  Beaut  if uL 

factured  out  of  a  sudden  rise  in  stocks.  It 
does  not  depend  on  the  market.  The  noble 
words  of  Julia  Ward  Howe  hold  the  final 
truth  that  crowns  this  train  of  speculation  : 

"  To  me  the  worship  of  wealth  means,  in 
tlie  present,"  says  Mrs.  Howe,  "  the  crown- 
ing of  low  merit  with  undeserved  honor,  the 
setting  of  successful  villany  above  unsuccess- 
ful virtue.  It  means  absolute  neglect  and 
isolation  for  the  few  who  follow  a  high  heart's 
love  through  want  and  pain,  through  evil  and 
good  report.  It  means  the  bringing  of  all  hu- 
man resources,  material  and  intellectual,  to 
one  dead  level  of  brilliant  exhibition,  a  second 
'  Field  of  the  Cloth  of  Gold,'  to  show  that  the 
barbaric  love  of  splendor  still  lives  in  man,  with 
the  thirst  for  blood  and  other  quasi  animal 
passions.  It  means  in  the  future  some  such 
sad  downfall  as  Spain  had  when  the  gold  and 
silver  of  America  had  gorged  her  soldiers  and 
nobles ;  something  like  what  France  experi- 
enced after  Louis  XIV.  and  XV.  I  am  no 
prophet,  and  least  of  all  a  prophet  of  evil ; 
but  where,  oh,  where,  shall  we  find  the  anti- 


Fine  Souls  and  Fine  Society.  10/ 

dote  to  this  metallic  poison  ?  Perhaps  in  the 
homoeopathic  principle  of  cure.  When  the 
money  miracle  shall  be  complete,  when  the 
gold  i\lidas  shall  have  turned  everything  to 
gold,  then  the  human  heart  will  cry  for  flesh 
and  blood,  for  brain  and  muscles.  Then 
shall  manhood  be  at  a  premium,  and  money 
at  a  discount."  The  final  word  on  society 
considered  as  a  fine  art,  considered  nobly  and 
with  full  recognition  of  its  high  purpose,  must 
always  be  this  word  of  America's  most  rep- 
resentative woman,  —  Julia  Ward  Howe. 


LOTUS-EATING. 


I  walked  on,  musing  with  myself 
On  life  and  art,  and  whether,  after  all, 
A  larger  metaphysics  might  not  help 
Our  physics,  — a  completer  poetry 
Adjust  our  daily  life  and  vulgar  wants 
More  fully  than  the  special  outside  plans 
Preferred  by  modern  thinkers,  as  they  thought 
The  bread  of  man  indeed  made  all  his  life. 

Auroj'a  Leigh, 


VICE  AND  ADVICE. 

!OME  wit  says  that  the  worst  vice  in 
the  world  is  advice ;  and  it  may  be 
added,  with  equal  truth,  that  no 
one  is  so  unwise  as  he  who  gives  advice, 
—  save  the  one  who  takes  it.  Of  course 
both  these  assertions  are  a  little  extreme,  and 
should  be  taken  with  more  than  the  tradi- 
tional grain  of  salt.  There  is  such  a  thing  as 
a  very  fine  and  true  appreciation  of  that  kind 
of  wisdom  which  may  be  imparted  by  counsel, 
and  of  the  value  of  that  influence  which  makes 
itself  felt  through  sympathetic  companionship. 
Still,  in  a  general  sense,  the  formal  asking  for 
and  receiving  advice  is  something  worse  than 
worthless,  inciting  unfounded  ideas  of  capa- 
bility for  counsel  on  the  part  of  one  who,  in 
a  misguided  moment,  shall  give  it,  and  ener- 
vating and  unnerving  the  one  who  receives 
and  appropriates  it. 


112  The  World  Beautiful 

Doubtless  the  clergy,  of  all  classes  of  men, 
suffer  most  from  this  burden  flung  upon  them 
by  the  ignorant  and  the  thoughtless.  The 
very  nature  of  their  calling  attracts  it,  and 
makes  it  difficult,  indeed,  to  evade  the  claims 
which  yet  they  cannot  meet,  and  which  they 
should  never  be  asked  to  meet.  There  is 
something  that  touches  the  fancy,  if  not  the 
conscience,  in  the  picture  not  infrequently 
held  up  of  the  clergyman  who  is  not  only  the 
preacher,  but  the  minister  as  well ;  who  shares 
all  his  people's  private  joys  and  griefs,  and  is 
their  guide  and  counsellor,  et  ccetera.  It  is  a 
picture  that  the  sentimental  novelists  are  fond 
of  depicting,  and  it  is  not  without  its  hu- 
man charm  and  something  of  its  divine  sig- 
nificance. The  value  of  personal  influence, 
through  sympatlietic  personal  intercourse,  can 
never  by  any  possibility  be  over-rated.  It 
was  what  Jesus  gave  to  His  disciples,  and  as 
far  as  possible  to  the  populace  ;  and  His  ex- 
ample remains  for  all  ages  the  ideal  one. 

Still,  even  ideals  themselves  are  somewhat 
relative  to  time  and  circumstances.     The  good 


Vice  and  Advice,  113 

priest,  who  shares  the  simple  joys  and  sorrows 
of  the  peasantry,  and  whose  relation  is  more 
that  of  the  father  to  his  family  than  of  the  cler- 
gyman to  his  parish,  undoubtedly  meets  a  real 
need  of  the  primitive  and  simple  life  to  which 
he  ministers.  As  that  life  advances  in  intelli- 
gence, it  gains  in  individual  self-reliance.  It 
gains  the  power  of  decision,  the  ability  to 
make  its  own  choice  and  selection.  The 
higher  service  of  the  priest  is  then  to  educate 
the  conscience,  to  stimulate  and  refine  the 
moral  sense,  and  to  make  his  teachings  tend 
to  the  one  supreme  result,  —  the  culture  of 
spirituality.  When  the  life  of  the  spirit  is 
once  grasped  by  the  intelligence  and  entered 
upon  by  the  response  of  the  soul  to  the 
Divine  Spirit,  then  is  the  individual  started 
on  that  upward  way  where  he  perceives,  with 
constantly  increasing  clearness,  the  relation  of 
his  soul  to  the  Divine,  —  where  he  can  seek 
the  leading  and  recognize  the  guidance. 

There  are  not  wanting,  however,  in  every 
city,  in  every  parish,  the  type  of  people  who 
desire  to  "  pour  out  their  soul/'  as  they  will 


114  The  World  Beaut  if al 

express  it,  to  something  or  somebody,  and 
their  minister  is  the  natural  victim  of  this 
yearning.  However  useless  and  even  harm- 
ful he  may  know  this  to  be,  it  is  difficult  to 
refuse,  by  virtue  of  his  holy  office.  And  there 
is  always  the  possibility  of  there  being  one 
real  need  amid  all  the  tide  of  mere  emotional 
and  sentimental  outpouring,  and  he  would 
rather  give  unnecessary  effi)rts  to  a  thousand 
tlian  deprive  one  of  essential  aid. 

Still,  it  is  a  man's  duty  to  himself — and 
not  less  that  of  the  clergyman  than  other  men 
—  not  to  be  submerged  in  a  tide  of  helpless 
appeals  from  people  who  would  do  far  better 
to  help  themselves.  As  Sir  Hugo  said  to 
Daniel  Deronda  :  ''  Be  courteous,  be  obliging, 
but  don't  give  yourself  over  to  be  melted 
down  for  the  benefit  of  the  tallow  trade."  A 
parish  should  realize  how  the  power  of  their 
minister  to  break  for  them  the  true  bread  of 
life,  to  communicate  to  them  the  spiritual 
energy  which  is  the  motor,  so  to  speak,  by 
which  each  may  successfully  conduct  life  for 
himself  —  they  should  realize,  how  his  power 


Vice  and  Advice.  115 

to  give  them  this  all-essential  aid  depends  on 
a  certain  freedom  and  detachment  from  mate- 
rial details.  It  is  his  office  to  give  them  the 
principles  of  navigating  the  sea  of  life  ;  but  it 
is  not  his  office  to  hold  the  rudder  and  steer 
each  man's  ship  for  him.  That  one  must  do 
for  himself. 

The  faculty  of  self-reliance  is  one  that 
should  be  considered  in  educational  culture. 
To  rely  on  one's  self  is  not,  necessarily,  to  be 
conceited  or  audacious.  It  may  consist  with 
a  very  adequate  appreciation  of  the  greater 
wisdom  of  other  people,  but  also  with  a  deli- 
cate reverence  for  that  greater  wisdom, — with 
that  reverence  which  would  forbid  intrusion 
or  insistence.  On  general  principles,  those 
persons  who  desire  to  have  their  lives  moulded 
and  their  souls  fed,  and  to  be  propelled  gen- 
erally by  somebody  else,  had  much  better 
learn  that  invaluable  lesson  of  the  culture  of 
self-reliance.  Each  must  live  his  life  for  him- 
self ;  he  must  realize  that  that  life  lies  between 
his  own  soul  and  God.  Seek  wisdom,  seek 
understanding ;   but   seek   it  at  the  Infinite 


116  The  World  Beautiful 

Source.     "  Trust  thyself,"  well  said  Eniersou. 
"  Every  heart  vibrates  to  that  irou  string." 

***** 

One's  There  is  perhaps  no  trait  in  hu- 

^^      man  nature  that  is  more  under  the 

Way. 

ban  of  a  general  and  by  no  means 
concealed  aversion  than  that  which  is  vaguely 
designated  as  the  liking  to  have  one's  own 
way.  It  is  held  up  to  protest,  to  scorn,  to 
denunciation.  Yet  after  all  what  is  better  ? 
Another  person's  way  ?  But  to  pursue  that 
successfully  requires  all  the  personal  inclina- 
tion of  angle,  the  thousand  subtle  determining 
causes  that  go  with  it,  and  which  no  individ- 
ual can  ever  transfer  to  another.  Yet  the 
strong  bent  to  one's  own  devices  and  plans  is 
not  unlikely  to  keep  one  in  a  state  of  semi- 
martyrdom  for  the  first  twenty-five  years  of 
life.  This  instinct  in  a  chikl  is  called  obsti- 
nacy, and  is  usually  rebuked  and  repressed  by 
parents  and  teachers.  In  early  youth  family 
and  friends  look  on  it  with  distrust,  if  not 
with  positive  disapproval,  and  it  is  only  after 


One's  Own  Waij.  117 

one  has  at  last  succeeded  in  asserting  his  in- 
dividuality and  holding  his  own,  that  this  dis- 
trust or  disapproval  becomes  mitigated. 

All  this  attitude  operates  as  a  check  and 
hindrance  to  entering:  on  one's  true  life.  If 
gained  at  last,  it  is  gained  in  spite  of  remon- 
strance and  impediments,  rather  than  entered 
into  gradually,  naturally,  and  joyfully,  as  into 
the  promised  land. 

It  may  safely  be  asserted  that  no  one  vrho 
depends  on  another  to  mark  out  his  path  for 
him  can  ever  make  much  imj^ression  upon  life. 
"  A  poor  thing,  but  mine  own,"  said  Touch- 
stone, and  so  saying  defined  the  secret  of 
power.  One's  own  way  may  be  in  the  ab- 
stract a  poor  thing,  but  being  one's  own,  its 
chances  of  success  are  far  above  those  that 
attend  a  better  way,  not  one's  own. 

In  fact,  the  magic  of  success  is  to  believe 
this.  The  people  who  ask  for  counsel  and 
advice,  and  get  it,  —  and  what  is  more,  fol- 
low it,  —  precipitate  themselves  into  a  chaotic 
wilderness,  "  w^here  nothing  is  but  what  is 
not."     The   man   who   asks  what  you  think 


118  The  World  Beautiful 

he  can  do,  cannot,  it  is  probable,  do  any- 
tiiing.  If  he  has  not  the  polarity  of  know- 
ing his  own  way,  and  having  a  way  of  his 
own  to  know,  he  is  driftinor  too  aimlessly  to 
arrive  at  any  specific  destination.  With  no 
trnst  in  himself  he  cannot  inspire  trust  in 
others. 

The  new  education  is  everywhere  recogniz- 
ing tlie  importance  of  the  education  of  the 
will,  and  to  lead  the  will  to  express  itself  in 
outward  habits  and  customs.  This  is  a  re- 
turn to  the  principles  of  Aristotle,  whose  sys- 
tem of  ethics  furnishes  permanent  illumina- 
tion which  has  never  been  surpassed  by  any 
thinker.  "  We  acquire  the  virtues,"  he  said, 
"  by  doing  the  acts.  We  become  builders  by 
building,  and  so  by  doing  riglit  acts  we  be- 
come righteous."  Which,  after  all,  is  but 
another  way  of  saying  that  '^  He  that  docth 
the  will  shall  know  of  the  doctrine." 

There  is  a  delicate  point  between  the  apoth- 
eosis of  the  will,  the  positivcness  and  the  con- 
fidence that  marks  out  one's  own  way  and 
follows  it,  and  that  over-confidence  in  one's 


Ones  Oton  Woy.  119 

^     ■      "  -■'  ■■  '        ■  ■  ■ — • — ~* — — — 

own  powers  which  leads  to  the  undue  exag- 
ageration  of  egoism ;  and  egoism  and  conceit 
are  largely  due  to  the  lack  of  any  standard 
of  measurement.  To  "  know  the  best  that 
has  been  thought  and  said  in  the  world," 
which  is  the  knowledge  held  by  Mattliew 
Arnold  as  desirable,  is  to  know  how  far 
short  of  what  is  really  great  and  permanent 
in  thought,  action,  or  literature,  one's  ow^n 
achievements  are  apt  to  be.  Devotion  to 
one's  own  way  only  becomes  heroic  when 
some  object  higher  than  ministering  to  per- 
sonal gain,  or  greed,  or  vanity,  is  the  object 
pursued.  It  is  not  unmixed  selfishness  or 
coarse  egoism  of  flaunting  boastfulness  that 
may  be  rightly  considered  in  carving  out 
one's  own  way.  These  are  of  the  lower 
plane  to  whicli  it  may  degenerate,  and  are 
its  abuses  rather  than  its  uses.  It  is  only 
when  conserved  to  ends  noble  in  them- 
selves, when  it  is  informed  not  only  by  in- 
tellectual purpose  but  by  moral  energy,  that  it 
becomes  worthy  to  create  and  control  a  happy 
future. 


120  The  World  Beautiful 

*'  The  suii  set,  but  not  his  hope ; 
Stars  rose,  —  his  faith  was  earlier  up  ; 

His  action  won  such  reverence  sweet 
As  hid  all  measure  of  the  feat." 

All  lives  that  are  in  the  best  sense  worth 
the  living  are  so  by  virtue  of  being  true  to 
their  own  polarity.  There  is  undoubtedly  a 
certain  line  of  life,  a  certain  definite,  however 
dimly  defined,  path  predestined  for  each,  and 
tiiat  achievement  which  we  are  accustomed  to 
call  success  is  simply  the  result  of  the  vision 
tliat  sees,  and  the  energy  that  follows  this 
hidden  but  divine  leadinir. 


Writing        It  is  the  temperament  which  is 

m  ympa-   ^yj}|jjjor   to   take   risks  that  is   the 
thetic  Ink.  ° 

temperament  of  success,  and  that 

reads  the  messages  written  in  sympathetic 
ink.  Its  success  may  not,  invariably,  be  the 
success  of  personal  gain,  or  of  personal  grati- 
fication ;  it  may  even  come  in  the  guise  of 
sacrifice  and  of  spending  and  being  spent  for 
others,  —  but  all  the  same  it  is  the  tempera- 


Writing  in  Sympathetic  Ink.        121 

ment  of  accomplishment  and  achievement,  one 
that  is  a  potent  factor  in  the  progress  of  the 
world.  It  is  only  the  idealists  who  take  risks, 
and  it  is  they  who  contribute  that  which  is 
most  of  value  to  the  world.  But  between 
the  idealist,  in  the  true  sense,  and  the  mere 
aesthetic  sentimentalist,  there  is  a  great  gulf 
fixed.  The  idealist  is  imaginative,  hopeful, 
and  abounding  with  life  and  eneigy.  He  sees 
visions,  and  he  dreams  dreams,  and  he  lives 
in  a  world  of  hopeful,  happy  forces  that  con- 
tinually radiate  new  energy,  —  that  generate 
it,  indeed,  and  that  form  the  living  coal  on  the 
altar.  The  mere  aesthetic  tastes  are  not  to  be 
mistaken  for  the  strong  out-going  and  out- 
giving forces  of  the  idealist.  A  good  propor- 
tion of  what  is  mistakenly  called  art  is  only 
the  aesthetic.  The  taste  for  color,  decoration, 
for  pictures  and  poetry  of  a  grade  that  appeals 
only  to  taste  and  fancy  but  have  no  message 
of  spiritual  life  to  convey,  —  these  are  by  no 
means  attributes  of  the  artistic,  but  rather  of 
the  aesthetic  nature.  The  one  is  on  the  spirit- 
ual plane ;  the  other  on  the  sensuous.     The 


122  The  World  Beautiful. 

one  is  the  appreciator  or  the  creator  of  all  no- 
ble forms  of  art ;  the  other  is  at  home  among 
the  gingor-jar  style  of  decorative  effect. 

If  one  would  accomplish  anything  in  tlie 
world  worth  doing,  he  must  have  sufficient 
confidence  in  himself  to  take  risks,  to  set  out 
on  journeys  of  wiiich  he  cannot  see  the  end 
or  know  by  what  means  he  shall  be  guided ; 
in  other  words,  he  must  be  capable  of  belief, 
of  trust  in  the  invisible.  A  strong  purpose 
creates  its  own  means  of  accomplishment.  "  If 
a  god  wishes  to  ride,"  says  Emerson,  "  every 
chip  and  stone  will  bud  and  shoot  out  winged 
feet  for  it  to  ride." 

Undoubtedly,  above  the  material  laws  which 
we  have  investigated  and  in  some  degree  for- 
mulated, there  is  a  higher  set  of  laws  whose 
workings  are  as  harmonious  and  as  method- 
ical, and  which  may  be  set  in  operation  by 
compliance  with  their  conditions.  It  is  un- 
questionably these  laws  that  are  invoked  by 
prayer.  Being  spiritual  potencies,  they  are 
moved  by  spiritual  agencies ;  and  this  may 
be  true  without  any  conflict  with   scientific 


Writing  in  Sympathetic  Ink.         123 

theories  or  rationalistic  truth  whose  operations 
are  restricted  to  the  physical  plane. 

It  is  on  this  higher  plane,  and  under  the 
spiritual  laws  that  govern  it,  that  the  idealist 
' — who  is  constantly  ready  to  take  risks  in 
order  to  inaugurate  or  to  advance  his  projects 
—  dwells.  He  is  intuitively  conscious  even 
if  he  has  never  formulated  it  of  having  to  do 
with  powers  that  on  a  lower  jjlane  of  life  are 
unknown ;  he  is  conscious  of  a  support  of 
which  the  world  knows  not. 

All  great  inventors  and  great  discoverers 
have  been  men  of  this  type.  They  have  been 
great  idealists,  as  truly  as  have  been  the  great 
poets  and  painters.  They  have  all  been  irre- 
sistibly borne  onward  by  faith  in  the  things 
that  could  not  be  seen, 

"  For  me,  I  have  no  choice  : 
I  might  turn  back  to  other  destinies, 
For  one  sincere  key  opes  all  Fortune's  doors." 

Always  to  the  idealist  is  it  true  that 

"  One  day  with  life  and  heart 
Is  more  than  time  enough  to  find  a  world." 


124  The  World  Beautiful 

Always  he  feels   the  courage  of  his  convic- 
tions in  that 

"  Success  in  thyself  which  is  best  of  all." 

He  who  is  conscious  of  alliance  with  these 
higher  forces  cannot  know  despondency  or  de- 
feat. He  sets  out  on  the  work  whose  pur- 
pose thrills  and  inspires.  He  has  no  idea  of 
the  details  by  which  it  is  to  be  accomplished. 
He  sees  it  as  in  vision,  as  a  whole.  If  he 
were  to  await  accurate  and  precise  informa- 
tion as  to  the  methods  by  which  each  detail 
could  be  wrought,  he  would  never  take  the 
initial  step.  But  he  is  sufficiently  at  one  with 
these  higher  potentialities  to  know  that  in 
some  way  his  purpose  will  be  supported,  his 
steps  guided,  his  efforts  prospered  to  fulfil- 
ment.   Michael  Angelo  somewhere  writes  :  — 

"  Meanwhile,  the  Cardinal  Ipolito,  in  whom 
all  my  best  hopes  were  placed,  being  dead,  I 
began  to  understand  that  the  promises  of  this 
world  are,  for  the  most  part,  vain  phantoms ; 
and  that  to  confide  in  one's  self,  and  become 
something  of  worth  and  value,  is  the  best  and 
Bafest  course." 


Success  as  a  Fine  Art,  125 

At  all  events,  it  is  they  who  do  confide  in 
themselves  who  are  apt  to  become  something 
of  worth  and  contribute  forces  of  value.  They 
set  their  courses  by  the  stars,  and  do  not  w^ait 
for  a  rushlight  for  every  individual  step  of  the 

way. 

'^  What  fairer  seal 
Shall  I  require  to  my  autheutic  mission 
Thau  this  fierce  energy,  —  this  instinct  striving, 
Because  its  nature  is  to  strive  ?  " 

To  believe  and  go  forward  is  the  key  to  suc- 
cess and  to  happiness.  Doubt  and  distrust 
are  the  negative  and  corrosive  forces.  The 
enthusiasm  for  a  high  purpose  calls  into  being 
the  agencies  by  means  of  which  it  may  be 
accomplislied.  Great  powers  attend  on  great 
thoughts ;  and,  above  all  and  beyond  all, 
among  the  creative  forces,  is  the  power  of  a 

great  faith. 

^  ^  ^  ji^  ^ 

Success      ''  What   boots   it,  —  what    the   soldier's 
as  a  mail, 

±me  Art.        Unless  he  conquer  and  prevail?'' 

Success  in  life  is  too  largely  and  far  too 
generally  considered  in  the  nature  of  special 


126  The  World  Beautiful. 

gifts  or  of  exceptional  good  foi'tune,  of  some 
unusual  provision  or  combination  in  some  way, 
rather  tlian  as  the  simple  duty  and  the  obliga- 
tion of  all  intelligent  and  aspiring  people  ;  that 
is  to  say,  it  should  be  held  as  the  normal,  and 
not  the  abnormal,  condition.  The  defective 
classes  in  intellect  or  in  morals  are  the  only 
ones  who  do  not  rise  to  the  level  of  being 
regarded  under  this  obligation.  The  idiot, 
the  lunatic,  and  the  totally  vicious  arc  the 
special  and  exceptional  in  the  great  rank  and 
file  of  humanity ;  and  it  is  they  alone  who 
should  not  be  held  by  public  sentiment  as 
under  the  law  of  success. 

For  even  the  chronic  invalid  may  make  such 
a  success  of  character  —  the  only  permanent 
form  that  it  takes  —  as  to  be  a  blessing,  a 
benediction,  and  an  inspiration  to  all  who 
come  near.  Physical  deficiencies  or  afflictions 
of  any  kind  do  not  put  one  outside  this  law, 
because  success  is  mental  and  moral  and  spirit- 
ual,—  a  result  of  fine  qualities  of  mind  and 
heart,  of  energy  and  of  striving,  —  and  is 
therefore  not  in  bonds  to  physical  or  material 


Success  as  a  Fine  Art.  127 

causes.  Success,  then,  is  simply  a  duty.  It  is 
the  obligation  of  the  many,  and  not  the  luxury 
of  the  few. 

*'  One  thing  is  forever  good,  — 
That  one  thing  is  success." 

To  achieve  success  is  not  merely  the  gratifi- 
cation of  a  personal  ambition,  not  merely  a 
selfish  endeavor ;  it  is  a  moral  duty,  and  a 
very  high  responsibility.  It  is  a  personal  obli- 
gation. Success  is  good.  The  traditional  talk 
about  failures  being  often  better  than  success ; 
the  traditional  feeling  that  the  successful  man 
or  woman  is,  by  that  very  achievement,  more 
or  less  isolated  from  the  average  toiling,  bur- 
dened masses  of  mankind ;  that,  though  suc- 
cess may  imply  a  certain  ability  and  keenness, 
its  very  realization  is  through  some  lack  of 
consideration,  some  defect  of  sympathy,  some 
self-centred  power,  that  pushes  on,  regardless 
of  those  through  whose  ranks  it  makes  its 
way, — this  conception  of  success  is  very  far 
removed  from  the  truth.  To  reo:ard  success 
as  more  or  less  synonymous  with  selfishness. 


128  The  World  Beautiful 

is  to  degrade  it  from  anything  like  its  real 
significance. 

No  one  has  success  until  he  has  the  abound- 
ing life.  This  is  made  up  of  the  many-fold 
activity  of  energy,  enthusiasm,  and  gladness. 
It  is  to  spring  to  meet  the  day  with  a  thrill  at 
being  alive.  It  is  to  go  forth  to  meet  the 
morning  in  an  ecstasy  of  joy.  It  is  to  realize 
the  oneness  of  humanity  in  true  spiritual  sym- 
pathy. It  is,  indeed,  that  which  one  is ;  not 
that  which  he  does  or  which  he  has.  And  so 
all  our  usual  conceptions  of  success  fall  infi- 
nitely short  of  the  genuine  thing.  It  is  not 
necessarily  success  to  be  rich,  or  famous,  or 
even  popular,  in  the  general  acceptation  of 
that  term.  These  attributes  and  accidental 
things  may  or  may  not  accompany  success ; 
but  their  presence  does  not  make  it,  their 
absence  does  not  take  it  away. 

It  is  as  amazing  as  it  is  sad,  that  we  go 
about  so  largely  burdening  ourselves  with 
strivings  that  are  of  no  consequence,  and  miss 
the  gladness  and  cxiiilaration  of  living.  Xo 
life  is  successful  until  it  is  radiant.    The  King 


Success  as  a  Fine  Art  129 

of  Glory  is  always  ready  to  come  in.  Why  do 
we  bar  the  way  ?  We  cannot  all  live  in  pala- 
ces ;  but  we  can  all  live  in  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven,  and  the  material  luxuries  of  the 
one  pale  before  the  glow  and  thrill  and  exal- 
tation of  the  other.  "  The  contribution  of 
Christianity  to  the  joy  of  living,  perhaps 
even  more  to  the  joy  of  thinking,  is  im- 
speakable,"  says  Dr.  Drummond.  "  The  joy- 
ful life  is  the  life  of  the  larger  mission,  the 
disinterested  life,  the  life  of  the  overflow  from 
self,  the  more  abundant  life  which  comes  from 
following  Christ.  ...  If  Christianity  can  do 
anything,  it  can  take  away  the  earth.  By  the 
wider  extension  of  horizon  which  it  gives,  by 
the  new  standard  of  values,  by  the  mere  set- 
ting of  life's  small  pomps  and  interests  in  the 
light  of  the  Eternal,  it  dissipates  the  world 
with  a  breath.  All  that  tends  to  abolish 
worldliness  tends  to  abolish  unrest." 

The  one  great  truth  to  which  we  all  need  to 
come  is,  that  a  successful  life  lies  not  in  doing 
this,  or  going  there,  or  possessing  something 
else  :  it  lies  in  the  quality  of  the  daily  life.    It 


130  The  World  Beautiful 

is  just  as  surely  success  to  be  just  and  cour- 
teous to  servants  or  companions  or  the  cliance 
comer,  as  it  is  to  make  a  noted  speech  before 
an  audience,  or  write  a  book,  or  make  a  mil- 
lion dollars.  It  is  achievement  on  the  spirit- 
ual side  of  things ;  it  is  the  extension  of  our 
life  here  into  the  spiritual  world,  that  is,  alone, 
of  value.  This  extension  is  achieved,  this 
growth  toward  higher  things  is  attained,  by 
our  habitual  attitude  of  mind.  It  develops  by 
truth  and  love  and  goodness  ;  it  is  stunted  by 
every  envious  thought,  every  unjust  or  unkind 
act.  Tlie  theatre  of  our  actions  may  be  public 
and  prominent,  or  private  and  obscure.  Our 
conduct  may  be  read  of  men,  or  it  may  hardly 
be  known  beyond  the  most  limited  circle. 
AVhat  then  ?  Does  not  one  require  moral 
healtli,  spiritual  loveliness  for  himself,  as  he 
docs  his  pliysical  healtli,  and  not  merely  for 
display  ?  One  would  prefer  to  be  well  rather 
than  ill,  if  he  were  alone  on  a  desert  island. 
Why  not,  as  well,  prefer  to  be  spiritually 
abounding,  whether  the  world  recognize  it  or 
not? 


Success  as  a  Fine  Art.  131 

"  For  to  be  carnally  minded  is  death  ;  and 
to  be  spiritually  minded  is  life  and  peace." 
Here  we  touch  the  profoundest  truth  of  life. 
All  the  jar,  the  unrest,  the  friction,  the  un- 
happiness  of  life  are  inseparably  related  to 
the  material  plane.  "  To  be  carnally  minded 
is  death."  But  leave  this  ;  live  the  "life  more 
abundant ;  "  rise  above  selfishness  and  envy  ; 
rejoice  in  your  neighbor's  success,  be  glad  in 
his  gladness;  love  what  is  lovely,  whether 
your  own  or  another's :  in  short,  be  "  spirit- 
ually minded,"  and  at  once  there  is  "life  and 
peace,"  at  once  there  is  success  in  its  pro- 
foundest significance. 

It  is  so  possible  to  cultivate  easy,  cordial, 
friendly  relations  of  reciprocal  good-will  to  all 
whom  one  may  meet.  It  is  so  possible  to  be 
glad  in  the  gladness  of  other  people  ;  and,  too, 
it  is  possible  so  to  extend  one's  own  life  into 
higher  regions  that  his  happiness  shall  not 
be  altogether  dependent  upon  other  people. 
He  may  come  to  realize  the  deep  truth  in 
the  lines, — 


132  The  World  Beautiful, 

**  Seek  not  the  spirit,  if  it  hold 
Inexorable  to  thy  zeal ; 
Trembler,  do  not  whiue  or  chide,  — 
Art  thou  not  also  real  ?  " 

^Yhen  one  can  gain  this  basis  of  actual 
reality  in  his  life ;  when  he  can  realize  that 
first  of  all  and  above  all  are  his  relations  to 
the  unseen,  his  anchorage  as  a  spirit  to  a 
spiritual  world,  developing  his  faculties  as 
best  he  may,  —  then  is  he  prepared  to  be  the 
truer  and  warmer  and  more  steadfast  friend, 
while  yet  less  dependent  on  friendship  than 
before. 

The  only  success  worth  the  name  is  the 
achievement  of  this  high  spirituality.  With 
it,  the  beggar  would  be  rich  ;  without  it,  the 
king  would  be  poor.  This  is  ''  the  thing  for- 
ever good,"  —  the  thing  that  may  truly  be 
called  success. 


There   are   few   writers    in   any 
A  Common 

Experience,  l^^'gc  city  who  do  not  receive  more 
or  less   (and  usually  more)  notes 
running  somewhat  after  this  fashion :  — 


A  Common  Experience,  133 

"...  Pardon  this  intrusion;  .  .  .  but  be- 
lieving that  you  are  a  friend  to  all  novices  in 
literature,  we  venture  to  ask  if  a  young  lady 
who  is  desirous  of  entering  into  active  literary 
(journalistic)  work  could  be  offered  a  word  of 
advice  ?  She  has  decided  ability  and  plenty  of 
determination.  Some  two  years  ago  you  printed 
one  of  her  poems,  and  personally  commended 
other  productions.   ..." 

There  is  a  somewhat  general  impulse  on  the 
part  of  those  receiving  such  letters  either  to 
ignore  them  altogether,  or  to  offer  strongly 
negative  advice  regarding  the  stranger's  de- 
sire to  enter  into  the  competition  of  what  is 
rather  nebulously  termed  overcrowded  work. 
'^  If  you  have  a  place  to  stay  in,  stay  in  it," 
growls  the  cynic.  "  There  are  more  workers 
than  there  is  work,  more  aspirants  for  places 
than  there  are  places  to  fill."  All  of  which  is 
not  without  truth;  but  is  there  not  a  still 
deeper  truth  ? 

The  presumption  of  experience  is  always 
against  the  probabilities  of  success  to  the  new 
and     untrained    workers.      But    experience, 


134  The  World  Beautiful 

tliough  not  without  its  claim  to  respect,  has 
yet  far  less  title  to  be  considered  than  has 
faith.  Experience  is  of  the  world,  and  faith 
is  of  the  spirit.  A  young  man  or  a  young 
woman  may  go,  unaided  and  unfriended,  to 
a  large  city,  —  may  go  with  nothing  and  to 
nothing,  —  and  yet  build  up  a  beautiful  and 
successful  life.  It  depends.  The  light  of  the 
public  square  alone  can  test  the  statue. 

So  far  as  literary  work  goes,  the  term  is  very 
elastic,  and  is  almost  stretched  to  embrace 
everything  in  these  days,  from  literature  proper 
—  from  literature  as  produced  by  an  Emerson, 
Hawthorne,  Tennyson,  Whipple,  or  Lowell  — 
to  tlic  inanities  of  a  fashion  reporter.  The 
requirements  of  that  rather  distinctive  branch 
of  work,  literary  journalism  (using  the  term 
in  its  ideal  significance),  are  far  greater  than 
those  for  the  spasmodic  production  of  special 
newspaper  or  magazine  articles  of  the  average 
quality.  The  literary  journalist  must,  per- 
force, take  all  knowledge  for  his  province,  to  a 
very  large  degree.  His  ideal  work  implies  be- 
hind it  the  endeavor  to  realize  in  it  certain 


A  Common  Experience,  135 

ideals  of  life.  There  is  a  very  definite  stand- 
ard to  be  maintained ;  and  no  great  or  uplift- 
ing writing  comes  out  of  narrow  and  trivial 
life.  The  degree  of  achievement  in  literary 
journalism  will  be  determined  more  by  the 
individuality  of  the  journalist  than  by  any  ex- 
ternal scenery  of  his  life.  Tlie  spirit  fashions 
its  own  world,  regardless  of  visible  correspond- 
ence between  its  inner  visions  of  beauty  and 
its  actual  limitations  of  environment. 

While,  however,  the  inexperienced  aspirant 
may  wish  to  enter  into  what  her  adviser  calls 
'^  active  literary  work,"  the  presumption  is  that 
she  has  not  the  culture  nor  the  original  power 
to  do  anything  of  the  sort.  But  if  she  has  a 
temperamental  tendency  toward  letters,  and 
the  gift  or  the  grace  that  overflows  in  verse, 
—  even  though  it  be  very  far  from  poetry,  — 
there  is  every  reason  to  believe  she  has  the 
capacity  for  being  trained  into  some  useful 
work  in  journalism.  It  is  true  that  the  daily 
press  does  not  want  her  verse  ;  it  can  always 
select  the  best  in  the  world,  —  while  its  origi- 
nal contributions  in  rhyme  are,  at  best,  doubt* 


136        '       The  World  Beautiful. 

fill ;  but  the  glow  and  vivacity  that  ripples 
itself  away  in  rhyme  is  a  very  good  ingredient 
for  reportorial  work.  It  argues  the  tempera- 
ment that  possesses  brightness,  ardor,  and  sym- 
pathy. And  the  personal  qualities  that  endear 
a  young  woman  to  her  friends  at  home,  and 
incline  them  to  write  of  her  and  to  try  to  se- 
cure for  her  a  hearing  in  a  distant  city,  are  the 
qualities  not  less  indispensable  in  a  newspaper 
office,  if  she  came  to  the  city ;  for  nowhere  is 
there  a  greater  demand  for  sweetness  of  spirit, 
for  refinement,  courtesy,  and  sympathetic  com- 
prehension. Harmony  is  an  important — one 
almost  says  the  important  —  factor  in  the  con- 
duct of  journalism.  Added  to  these  qualities 
the  young  aspirant  must  bring  to  her  work 
plenty  of  willingness,  of  energy,  and  reliability. 
She  nmst  learn  to  be  in  her  place  when  her 
place  needs  her ;  and  to  that  all  other  matters 
of  life  must  be  held  subordinate.  Engaged  to 
do  a  certain  work,  it  is  her  first  duty  always 
to  do  that  work  to  the  very  best  of  her  ability 
—  not,  perhaps,  her  only  duty,  but  always  her 
first  one. 


A  Common  Experience,  137 

Fitness  for  work  inevitably  creates  its  own 
theatre  of  action.  Opportunities  correspond 
with  almost  mathematical  accuracy,  to  the 
ability  to  use  them. 

If  the  aspirant  for  city  journalism  is  pre- 
pared to  enter  on  a  branch  of  service  that  is 
very  probably  within  her  possibilities  and 
give  to  it  her  best  effort  and  her  faithful  devo- 
tion, trusting  to  growth  and  fitness  for  subse- 
quent promotion,  there  is  no  reason  why  she 
should  not  make  her  trial  of  the  chances, 
though  a  hundred  have  tried  and  failed. 
Their  failure  creates  no  precedent  for  her, 
because  places  are  never  found,  but  made. 
Ninety-nine  may  fail  to  make  a  place,  and  the 
one  hundredth  succeed.  There  is  true  wisdom 
in  the  lines  from  Tlieocritus :  — 

*'  A  shipwrecked  sailor,  buried  on  this  coast, 
Bids  you  set  sail ; 
Full  many  a  gallant  ship,  when  we  were  lost, 
Weathered  the  gale." 

Never  need  one  be  disheartened  or  dis- 
couraged by  other  people's  failures.  They 
have  no  power  to  aftect  his  own. 


138  The  World  Beautiful 

The  woman  who  desires  to  write  is,  indeed, 
an  ever-present  problem,  not  only  to  the  lite- 
rary profession,  but  largely  to  society  as  well. 
Her  chosen  victims,  whom  she  selects  as  pre- 
destined to  serve  as  amateur  audiences,  repre- 
sent both  the  literary  worker  and  tlie  general 
reader ;  and  her  inquiries  as  to  ways  and 
means  are  addressed  to  each  faction  with 
equal  impartiality. 

Now,  there  is  nothing  to  be  said  against 
the  aspiration  to  engage  in  literary  work.  If 
tlic  attractions  do  not  invariably  point  to  the 
destinies,  there  is  always  more  or  less  of  a 
probability  that  way.  And  while  the  aspirant 
will  be  told  dismal  and  depressing  talcs  of  an 
overcrowded  market,  and  while  these  tales 
arc  true,  they  really  amount  to  very  little. 
The  tools  are  to  one  who  can  handle  them. 
Let  the  right  person  come,  and  he  passes 
through  the  ranks  and  h.as  his  own  right  of 
way.  London  was  overflowing  with  literary 
workers  ;  but  Kudyard  Kipling  came,  and  edi- 
tors and  publishers  entreated  him  to  invade 
their  columns.    The  person  who  has  something 


A  Common  Experience.  139 

to  say  will  always  find  a  hearing.  It  does  not 
make  the  slightest  difFercnco  if  a  thousand 
persons  before  him  have  failed.  He  is  not 
governed  by  their  conditions,  because  all  the 
conditions  and  circumstances  that  attend  any 
one  are  individual.  Each  person  is  the  mag- 
netic centre  of  the  elements  he  alone  attracts, 
and  these  unite  in  the  combinations  that  form 
his  conditions  and  atmosphere.  Because  one's 
predecessors  have  succeeded  or  failed,  is  not 
the  slightest  argument  in  favor  or  against  a 
man's  own  success  or  failure.  A  thousand 
may  fall  at  his  right  hand,  and  ten  thousand 
at  his  left,  and  the  pestilence  not  come  nigh 
him.     All  depends. 

So  to  the  girl  or  the  woman  who  wants  to 
write  there  is  but  one  thing  to  be  said,  — 
write.  But  realize  that  this  work  is  purely 
and  wholly  a  matter  of  individual  fitness.  All 
the  cards  and  compliments  of  society,  or  the 
lack  of  them,  will  never  make  or  unmake  the 
writer.  It  is  worse  than  useless  to  ask 
friend,  acquaintance,  or  stranger  if  you  may 
read   to   them    your   story,   essay,    or    poem. 


140  The  World  Beaidifal 

Their  liking  or  not  liking  it  is  no  test,  and  it 
is  merely  a  waste  of  time  on  both  sides.  Try 
the  test  of  the  liglit  of  the  public  square,  — 
that  is,  the  editorial  test.  Make  the  publish- 
ing-house, the  magazine,  the  newspaper  your 
bar  of  judgment.  It  is  the  only  possible  cri- 
terion. The  less  you  talk  about  your  inten- 
tions and  aspirations  the  better.  Put  all  that 
surplus  energy  into  your  work.  Study  the 
range  and  tone  of  the  periodicals  you  propose 
to  work  into,  and  send  the  thing  that  is  not 
utterly  incongruous  with  the  periodical  to 
which  it  is  addressed. 

The  literary  market  may  be  crowded,  but  it 
is  all  the  time  being  enlarged.  There  is,  at 
all  events,  always  abundance  of  room  for  the 
writer  who  has  something  to  say  that  is  worth 
hearing.  AVhether  an  aspirant  is  that  person 
or  not,  the  market  test  alone  will  decide. 
The  praise  and  compliments  of  friends  are 
very  easy  to  get,  but  they  are  not  worth  one 
straw  in  the  way  of  actual  weight  with  the 
editorial  mind. 

To  determine  to  accomplish  a  certain  thing 


A  Common  Experience,  141 

is  to  have  it  half  done  at  ouce.  Energy  is 
creative.     Believe,  and  go  forward. 

Of  course  there  are  times  and  seasons  when 
a  group  of  friends,  or  two  en  tete-a-tete^  can 
talk  over  the  conditions  of  literary  supply  and 
demand  with  stimulating  effect ;  but  these 
seasons  arise  spontaneously,  and  are  idle  if 
prepared  for  beforehand. 

It  may  seem  uncharitable  to  say  that  there 
is  absolutely  no  purpose  served  in  helping  the 
person  who  cannot,  for  the  most  part,  help 
himself;  yet  it  is  true.  It  is  like  trying  to 
"  keep  up  the  sun  at  nights  in  heaven,"  or  to 
induce  water  to  run  up  hill.  Unless  the  in- 
dividual has  that  nameless  gift  in  himself 
which  magnetizes  conditions,  no  power  on 
earth  can  create  these  conditions  for  him. 
The  amateur  lecturer  bores  society  to  a  fatal 
degree  by  insisting  that  her  friends  shall  create 
a  social  and  purely  artificial  market  for  her 
tickets.  It  may  be  done  once,  but  unless  she 
has  the  interest  and  the  power  to  attract  the 
general  public  of  its  own  will,  the  artificial 
success  can  never  be  repeated.  The  effort 
is  absolutely  useless. 


142  The  World  Beautiful 

Let  one  give  the  aid  lie  can,  by  all  means, 
when  the  word,  the  act,  or  the  money  will 
serve  as  a  bridge  thrown  over  a  chasm  which 
otherwise  would  check  an  onward  progress ; 
but  when  the  object  of  solicitude  has  in  him- 
self no  original  impetus,  then  do  all  the  aids 
in  the  world  become  utterly  useless. 

One  who  desires  to  do  a  given  work  should 
first  study  intelligently  the  spiritual  laws  that 
govern  it  as  surely  as  the  law  of  gravita- 
tion controls  all  efforts  on  the  material  plane. 
The  more  one  comprehends  these  spiritual 
laws,  the  more  entirely  can  he  control  the  con- 
ditions of  his  life.  The  higher  always  dom- 
inates the  lower.  One  who  comes  into  an 
intelligent  recognition  of  spiritual  laws  need 
not  bo  submerged  by  calamity,  or  left  to  the 
blind  fiite  of  circumstance.  He  can  arise  in 
his  own  spiritual  integrity  ar.d  say :  '^  I  have 
such-and-such  a  purpose  in  life.  I  will  work 
it  out  to  certain  ends.  I  will  control  the 
currents,  and  not  be  controlled  by  them." 

The  degree  to  which  this  assertion  may  be 
carried  out  would  amaze  those  who  never 
verified  its  truth  by  their  own  experience. 


THAT  WHICH  IS  TO  COME. 


We  see  but  half  the  causes  of  our  deeds 
Seeking  them  wholly  iu  the  outer  life, 
And  heedless  of  the  encircling  spirit  world, 
Which,  though  unseen,  is  felt,  and  sows  in  us 
All  germs  of  pure  and  world-wide  purposes. 

Lowell. 


INTIMATIONS  AND  PROMPTINGS. 

But  whoso  answers  not  God's  earliest  call 

Forfeits  or  dulls  that  faculty  supreme 

Of  lying  open  to  his  genius, 

"Which  makes  the  wise  heart  certain  of  its  ends. 

Lowell. 

HERE  is  no  question  but  that  every 
one  receives  in  a  greater  or  less 
degree  intimations  and  promptings 
which  come  from  some  source  higher  than 
his  own  consciousness.  There  is  as  little 
question  that  both  his  happiness  and  his  suc- 
cess are  to  be  measured  by  his  recognition 
of  the  Vision,  his  obedience  to  the  Voice. 
Not  only  that,  but  he  is  responsible,  too,  for 
the  degree  in  which  he  receives  the  higher 
intimations.  These  grow  numerous  or  fade 
away  altogether,  according  to  the  quality  of 
life.  It  may  be  held  so  pure,  so  receptive  to 
all  high  influences,  so  noble  in  its  aspiration, 
as  to  furnish  the  right  conditions  for  these 
finer  promptings ;   or   it   may  so   degenerate 

10 


146  The  World  Beautiful 

into  the  material,  the  selfish,  the  self-centred 
as  to  become  deaf  and  blind  and  unresponsive 
to  them.  To  gain  a  trifle  —  merely  a  transient 
trifle  at  that  —  many  often  sacrifice  the  one  ir- 
resistible and  all-conquering  force,  spirit  power. 
Balzac  emphasizes  this  truth  wlien  he  says, 
in  "  Seraphita  "  :  — 

"  Do  for  God  what  you  do  for  3'our  ambi- 
tious projects,  what  you  do  in  consecrating 
yourself  to  Art,  what  you  have  done  when  you 
loved  a  human  creature,  or  sought  some  secret 
of  human  science.  Is  not  God  the  whole  of 
science,  the  all  of  love,  the  source  of  poetrj^  ? 
Surely,  His  riches  are  worthy  of  being  coveted ! 
His  treasure  is  inexhaustible,  His  power  infi- 
nite. His  love  immutable.  His  science  sure  and 
darkened  by  no  mystery.  Be  anxious  for  noth- 
ing. He  will  give  you  all.  Yes,  in  His  heart 
are  treasures  with  which  the  petty  joys  you  love 
on  earth  are  not  to  be  compared.  What  I  tell 
you  is  true  ;  you  shall  possess  His  power ;  you 
may  use  it  as  you  would  use  the  gifts  of  love. 
Alas  !  men  doubt;  they  lack  faith  and  will  and 
persistence.  .  .  .  One  thought  borne  inward, 
one  prayer  uplifted,  one  echo  of  the  Word 
within  us,  and  our  souls  are  forever  changed. 
.  .  .  The  soul  is  ceaselessly  joyful.   .  .  .  The 


Intimations  and  Promptings.         147 

final  life,  the  fruition  of  all  other  lives  to  which 
the  powers  of  the  soul  have  tended,  and  whose 
merits  open  the  Sacred  Portals  to  perfected 
man,  is  the  life  of  Prayer  ?  Who  can  make 
you  comprehend  the  grandeur,  the  might,  the 
majesty  of  Prayer?  There  are  privileged  be- 
ings. Prophets,  Seers,  Messengers,  and  Mar- 
tyrs, all  those  who  suffer  for  the  AYord  and  who 
proclaim  it ;  such  souls  spring  at  a  bound  across 
the  human  sphere,  and  rise  at  once  to  Prayer. 
So,  too,  with  those  whose  souls  received  the  fire 
of  faith.  Be  one  of  those.  God  welcomes 
boldness.  Know  this,  the  torrent  of  your  will 
is  so  all-powerful  that  a  single-  emission  of  it, 
made  with  force,  can  obtain  all ;  a  single  cry, 
uttered  under  the  pressure  of  faith,  suffices.  Be 
one  of  such  beings,  full  of  force,  of  will,  of 
love  !  Be  conquerors  on  the  earth  !  .  .  .  Thus 
the  separation  takes  place  between  matter, 
which  has  so  long  wrapped  its  darkness  round 
you,  and  spirit,  which  was  in  you  from  the 
beginning. 

"  Then  you  will  no  longer  feel  convictions, 
they  will  have  changed  to  certainties.  The 
Poet  utters,  the  Thinker  meditates,  the  Right- 
eous acts ;  but  he  who  stands  upon  the  borders 
of  the  Divine  World  prays,  and  his  prayer  is 
word,  thought,   action  in  one  !  .   .   .  The  uni- 


148  The  World  Beautiful 

verse  belongs  to  him  who  wills,  who  knows, 
who  prays  ;  but  he  must  will,  he  must  know,  he 
uust  pray,  — in  a  word,  he  must  possess  force, 
wisdom,  faith." 

To  recognize  the  Vision,  listen  to  the  Voice, 
to  be  open  perpetually  to  the  divine  prompt- 
ings, is  to  come  to  that  spiritual  plane  on 
which  thought  and  action  are  one ;  where 
achievement  lifts  itself  outside  visible  causes 
or  forms.  Prayer  is  simply  the  union  of  the 
human  Spirit  with  the  Divine.  It  compre- 
hends within  itself  all  potency.  ^'  When  you 
possess  the  faculty  of  praying  without  weari- 
ness, with  love,  with  force,  with  certainty, 
with  intelligence,  your  spiritualized  nature  will 
presently  be  invested  with  power.  The  quick- 
ness of  spirit  becomes  yours." 

There  is  sometliing  wrong  when  life  be- 
comes a  drudgery  or  a  weariness.  It  is  like 
making  a  journey  over  the  continent  on  foot, 
instead  of  taking  a  lightning-express  train. 

It  is  possible  to  rise  to  the  region  of  crea- 
tive power  where  thouglit  is  the  force  tliat 
produces  swift  results.     Force,  will,  and  love 


Through  Struggle  to  Achievement.     149 

are  the  conquerors.      "The  universe  belongs 
to  him  who  wills,  who  knows,  who  prays." 

Success  in  life  is  simply  coming  in  touch 
with  these  spiritual  forces.  It  is  the  truth 
implied  in  the  words  of  Jesus  when  He  said  : 
"  Seek  ye  first  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  and 
all  these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you.'* 
Seek  first  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  —  the  realm 
of  spirit  force ;  then  all  other  things  follow. 
The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  ^^joy  and  peace 
and  love  in  the  Holy  Ghost."  Life,  then,  to 
be  successful,  to  be  lived  in  this  kingdom  of 
heaven,  should  be  joyful,  loving,  and  beauti- 
ful in  its  serene  peace. 


And  he  who  flagg'd  not  in  the  earthly  strife, 
From  strengtii  to  strength  advancing,  —  only  he, 
His  soul  well-knit,  and  all  his  battles  won, 
Mounts,  and  that  hardly,  to  eternal  life. 

Matthew  Arnold. 

Through         In  the  life  of  every  one  who  has 

rugg.e  0   ^.gr,]}y  tried  to  make  his  life  some- 
Achievemant. 

thing  finer  and  nobler  and  more 

impressive  in  its  influence  than  a  mere  exist- 


150  The  World  Beautiful, 

ence  could  be,  there  come  retrogressions, 
backward  eddies  in  the  tide,  unforeseen  obsta- 
cles and  hindrances.  What  then  ?  Shall  he 
give  up  the  struggle  and  relax  into  common- 
place activities  ?  "  There  is  no  sorrow  I  have 
thought  more  about  than  this,"  wrote  George 
Eliot :  "  that  one  who  aspires  to  live  a  higher 
life  than  the  common  should  fall  from  that 
serene  height  into  the  soul-wasting  struggle 
with  worldly  annoyances."  Nor  is  there  any 
sorrow  or  loss  or  pain  of  life  equal  to  such 
an  experience.  To  deny  it  would  be  false  ;  to 
ignore  it  would  be  foolish.  It  is  an  experi- 
ence which  may  come  to  any  one,  which  does 
come  to  many  of  us ;  and  it  is  not  blindness 
to  it  that  will  aid  but  rather  the  clearer  sight 
to  recognize  the  experience  at  its  true  value, — 
to  hold  the  serenity  of  spirit  that  will  not  be 
unduly  terrified  and  exaggerate  the  evil,  and 
also  the  seriousness  of  contemplation  that  will 
not  flippantly  pass  it  by. 

The  mysterious  principle  of  vicarious  atone- 
ment has  prevailed  in  the  universe,  and  re- 
vealed itself,  in  some  form,  through  every  age 


Through  Struggle  to  Achievement.     151 

and  in  every  national  and  individual  Iiistoiy. 
The  Christ  on  Calvary  is  but  the  supreniest, 
divinest  form  that  the  truth  has  taken. 
The  Roman  lei]fend  that  tells  how  Curtius 
leaped  into  the  dark  gulf  which  closed  over 
him,  is  but  another  attestation  of  the  way  this 
universal  truth  has  taken  root  in  every  litera- 
ture and  every  land.  No  work  —  not  even  the 
individual  work  of  one's  own  life  —  is  ever 
assured  until  sacrifice,  in  some  form  or  other, 
is  made.  ^'  That  which  thou  sowest  is  not 
quickened  except  it  die."  It  is  the  power  to 
recognize  this  relation  of  temporal  defeat  to 
eternal  success  which  is  the  all-determining 
factor,  —  the  power  to  see,  not  the  mere  paltry 
annoyances  of  the  moment,  but  the  vision 
shining  fiiir  beyond,  and  to  endure,  as  seeing 
Him  who  is  invisible. 

To  recognize  loss,  or  pain,  or  annoyance, 
not  flippantly  nor  with  undue  dread,  is  to 
assume  the  conquerinoj  attitude.  No  one 
is  defeated  until  he  gives  up.  The  point 
is,  then,  not  to  give  up.  Life  is,  after  all, 
a    supernatural    affair,    an    affair    of   super- 


152  The  World  Beautiful 

naturalism  ;  and  it  is  the  iuvisible  powers 
which  are  its  stay,  its  guide,  and  its  inspira- 
tion. We  live  and  move  and  have  our  being 
on  the  divine  side  of  things.  We  only  live, 
in  any  true  sense,  as  we  arc  filled  with  the 
heavenly  magnetism.  ''  Thou  hast  made 
known  to  me  the  ways  of  life ;  thou  shalt 
make  me  full  of  joy,  with  thy  countenance," 
says  the  disciple.  Here  is  the  true  gospel  to 
live  by.  There  are  ''  ways  of  life ; "  and 
through  toil  and  trial  they  shall  be  reached. 
The  one  is  eternal ;  the  other  temporal.  It  is 
unwise  to  lay  too  much  stress  on  the  infelici- 
ties of  the  moment.  Exaltation  alone  is  real ; 
depression  is  unreal.  The  obstacle  is  not  in- 
tended to  stop  the  progress  but  to  stinmlate 
new  energies. 

For  one  mounts  to  eternal  life  now,  — 
not  in  some  vague  to-morrow,  but  to-day. 
Eternal  life  is  a  condition,  not  a  period.  Live 
in  immortal  energies,  in  noble  purpose,  in  true 
lift  of  soul,  and  one  lives  at  once  and  here  the 
immortal  life.  His  soul  has  already  put  on 
immortality. 


Through  Struggle  to  Achievement     153 

There  is,  too,  a  charm  of  going  out  into  the 
unknown  which  has  seldom  been  sufficiently 
appreciated  by  those  to  w^hom  changes  in 
affairs  come  by  ways  outside  their  own  choice, 
or  from  causes  with  whose  origin  they  are  not 
familiar.  The  ordinary  feeling  is  of  shrinking 
from  the  new ;  of  dreading  to  go  from  the 
known  into  the  unknown  ;  of  leaving  with 
reluctance  the  old  familiar  ways  for  the  new 
and  untried.  This  implies  a  want  of  adjust- 
ment to  the  divine  harmony,  and  not  only 
ignorance,  but  unbelief  in  the  laws  of  the 
universe. 

As  we  all  realize,  mere  existence  is  not  life. 
Not  existence,  but  experience,  constitutes  liv- 
ing; and  experience  is  gained  largely  by  a 
continual  succession  of  new  environments. 
With  the  immaterial  as  with  the  material, 
the  law  holds  good  that  two  bodies  cannot 
occupy  the  same  space  at  the  same  time.  One 
experience  crowds  out  another,  save  that  the 
best  of  each  is,  in  its  essence,  assimilated  into 
life  and  becomes  a  part  of  one's  character. 
Now,  there  is  such  a  thing  as  spiritual  as  well 


154  The  World  Beautiful 

as  material  enterprise.  On  the  visible  and 
material  side  of  life,  those  who  have  conquered 
have  always  been  they  who  have  gone  out  and 
on  into  tiie  unknown.  The  hero  is  he  who 
takes  risks  ;  although  the  converse  is  not,  of 
course,  true,  — that  he  who  takes  risks  its  inva- 
riably a  hero.  But  no  man  conquers  who  is 
afraid  to  venture  outside  his  own  garden  plot. 
No  one  conquers  spiritually  who  is  not  willing 
to  accept  risks,  —  to  go  out  into  the  untried 
and  unknown  immaterial  realm.  New  expe- 
riences are  the  very  material  from  which  it 
draws  its  life  and  weaves  its  fabric.  They  are 
something  to  be  largely  welcomed  and  em- 
braced. They  are  possessions  ;  they  arc  sj)irit- 
ual  capital.  Change  is  apt  to  be  development. 
Under  new  skies  new  voices  call  to  one, — 
new  inspirations  are  in  the  very  air. 

It  is  commonly  said  that  no  one  can  escape 
his  fate.  But  fate  is —  unpenetratcd  causes  ; 
and  cause  and  effect  are  as  indissolubly  linked 
together  as  night  and  day,  or  as  the  succession 
of  the  seasons.  T!ie  law  of  cause  and  effect 
can  no  more  be  escaped  or  annulled  than  can 


Through  Struggle  to  Achievement.     155 

the  law  of  gravitation.  One  who,  from  cre- 
ating the  cause,  sets  in  motion  the  current  of 
activities  that  produce  the  effect,  must  accept 
that  effect.  As  the  Theosophist  would  saj,  it 
is  a  part  of  his  karma.  But  causes  wear  them- 
selves out,  and  their  effects  then  cease.  If 
one  does  not  like  his  life  in  its  present  aspect, 
he  can  change  it  for  the  future  by  changiiig 
the  sources  from  wliich  the  present  flows  and 
is  shaped  and  colored.  Every  individual  is 
simply  the  result,  the  exact  sum  and  amount, 
of  the  causes  he  has,  by  his  own  series  of 
choices,  set  in  motion.  But  surely  no  life  is 
ever  so  perfect  in  all  its  fulfilments  or  ap- 
pointments, that  there  are  not  possibilities 
or  preferences  for  something  different.  If  a 
change  may  be  worse,  it  may  also  be  better ; 
and  whether  better  or  worse  depends,  after 
all,  wholly  on  ourselves.  It  is  the  mental  atti- 
tude that  stamps  circumstances,  and  not  cir- 
cumstances that  stamp  the  mental  attitude. 

Outward  life  is  the  reflex  of  inward  states. 
It  is  the  expression  which  the  spirit  makes  of 
itself  The  mind  stamps  its  impress  upon  the 
material  surroundings. 


156  The  World  Beautiful 

Goethe  has  said  that  the  highest  state  is  a 
"tranquillity  of  soul,  in  which  a  man  loves 
what  he  commands  himself  to  do."  There  is 
more  in  this  than  meets  the  eye.  To  love 
what  one  commands  himself  to  do  is  to  endo^v 
the  action  with  that  vitality  and  magnetism 
which  creates  success.  To  command  one's 
self  to  do  it  without  loving  it,  is  to  perform 
merely  a  mechanical  action  which  generates 
no  power  to  perpetuate  its  influence.  Let 
no  one  fail  to  realize  the  infinite  potency  that 
lies  in  devotion  to  the  work  which  he  has 
commanded  himself  to  do.  Love  that  into 
which  one  goes  forward.  Endow  it  with  life  ; 
generate  for  it  the  magnetic  atmosphere  of 
liope  and  belief  and  conviction.  One's  per- 
sonal power  carried  into  a  new  environment 
shall  produce  external  circumstances  as  beau- 
tiful as  is  the  power  he  brings  to  bear  on 
them.  It  depends  wholly  on  himself.  If  one 
is  afraid  of  new  conditions,  —  if  he  dread  the 
untried,  —  it  is  really  the  fear  of  himself.  But 
if  he  be  strong  in  integrity  of  purpose,  in 
singleness  of  aim,  in  that  larger  love  and  in 


Through  Struggle  to  Achievement,     157 

the  sweetness  of  spirit  which  is  serenity  and 
peace,  he  need  feel  no  terror  in  going  out  into 
the  unknown.     The  cloud  by  day  becomes  a 
pillar  of  fire  by  night     The  need  of  the  morn- 
ing is  met  by  the  heavenly  manna.     Nor  need 
the  manna  be  stored  and  hoarded  :  it  is  offered 
anew  each  day.     One  need  only  trust.     The 
force  in   to-day  will   rival  and  re-create  the 
beautiful  yesterday.     If  the  angels  go  out,  the 
archangels  may  come  in ;  and  whether  they  do 
depends  wholly  on  one's  self.     That  power  is 
'^  to  him  who  power  exerts  "  is  as  certain  and 
unvarying  a  truth  as  any  law  of  mathematics. 
The  power  that  is  within  rushes  to  meet  one 
from  without.     All  that  is  one's  own,  —  that 
is  to  say,  all  that  one  has  conquered  of  the 
invisible  potencies  by  means  of  his  own  spirit- 
ual energy,  —  all  that  power  is  his.    No  exter- 
nal change  can  deprive  him  of  it.     Nothing 
can  lessen  its  force  to  create  his  outward  life. 
The  external  circumstances,  the  surroundings 
amid  which  he  shall  dwell,  the  friends  that 
shall  bring  untold  sv/eetness  and  grace  into 
his  life,  —  all  these  are  predetermined  by  his 


158  The  World  Beautiful. 

own  mental  state  as  certainly  as  the  stone  falls 
to  the  earth  by  the  law  of  gravitation.  We 
always  come  to  our  own,  and  enter  in  and 
possess  the  land. 

Trial  and  perplexity  teach  one  the  wiser 
meanings  of  life,  and  the  way  to  speed  their 
departure  is  to  grasp  the  meaning  as  quickly 
as  possible.  Then,  with  this,  let  one  demand 
from  the  higher  powers  the  aid  to  overcome 
the  plane  of  trial,  and  to  rise  to  that  where  all 
work  is  done  with  exliilaration,  and  it  will  be 
given  in  even  greater  measure  than  he  could 
ask. 

It  is  these  matters  that  are  now  those  of 
chief  concern  to  the  public  in  general.  It  is  a 
very  striking  fact  that,  of  all  the  long  series  of 
congresses  held  in  Chicago  in  connection  with 
the  World's  Exposition,  none  began  to  attract 
such  crowds  and  throngs  as  those  which  dis- 
cussed religion  and  the  higher  life.  The 
psychical,  tlie  theosophical,  and  the  great  Par- 
liament of  Religions  —  a  sublime  assembly  — 
were  those  to  which  the  people  pressed  and 
thronged,  in  a  degree  tenfold  greater  than  to 


A  Question  of  the  Day.  159 

those  devoted  to  science  or  economics.  For 
the  whole  world  is  feeling  the  electric  thrill  of 
a  new  life.  Our  Sinai  is  before  us,  and  we 
realize  that  we  must  climb  it  and  hold  con- 
verse with  the  divine.  A  wave  of  new  invigo- 
ration  is  sweeping  over  the  entire  world.  The 
gospel  of  hope,  of  faith,  is  bearing  men  to  a 
wingdd  vantage-ground. 

To  keep  one's  foot  firmly  set  in  the  way 
that  leads  upward,  however  dark  and  thorny 
it  may  be  at  the  moment,  is  to  conquer.  All 
trial  is,  in  its  very  nature,  temporal ;  all  joy 
is,  in  its  nature,  eternal.  Legions  of  angelic 
powers  wait  upon  the  soul,  and  guide  it  to  the 
Mount  of  Vision. 

***** 
,  ^  There  is  no  question  but  that  the 

A  Question 

of  the  Day.  '\tmosphere   in   whicli   we    live   is 

magnetic,  or,  at  least,  capable  of 

being  made  so,  —  of  being  so  charged  with 

spiritual  magnetism  that  all  outward  events 

are   not   only  modified,  but  are   even   deter- 


160  The  World  Beautiful 

mined   bj  this  all-pervading  force.     Is  it  in 
Festus  that  we  find  the  lines,  — 

"  There  are  points  from  which  we  may  command  our 
life, 
When  the  soul  sweeps  the  future  like  a  glass ; 
And  coming  things,  full-freighted  with  our  fate, 
Jut  out  on  the  dark  offing  of  the  mind  "  ? 

And  it  is  more  than  a  question  if  every 
morning  is  not  such  a  point  in  life. 

''  Every  day  is  a  fresh  beginning  ; 
Every  morn  is  the  world  made  new." 

Each  day  we  stand  on  the  threshold  of  a 
new  lifetime.  We  may  say  that  the  conse- 
quences of  one  day,  of  one  year,  of  one  decade, 
reach  over  into  another ;  that  they  overlap  each 
other  ;  that  we  are  always,  as  the  Theoso- 
phists  would  phrase  it,  under  the  influence  of 
a  past  karma.  But  consequences  wear  out ; 
new  karma,  new  conditions,  replace  the  old ; 
and  then,  over  all  and  above  all,  there  is  the 
absolute  and  unchaiiGfins:  and  eternal  truth  of 
the  forgiveness  of  the  Divine  Love.  Up  to  this 
point  theosophical  speculation,  as  well  as  the 
so-called  liberal  "  thought,"  is  full  of  vitality 


A  Question  of  the  Day,  161 

and  clearness.  It  is  helpfully  explanatory  of 
the  phenomena  of  life,  of  its  various  states 
and  planes.  But  rationalism  does  not  satisfy, 
as  an  end.  It  is  all  very  well  as  a  means,  and 
so  far  as  it  goes  ;  but  it  does  not  go  very  far. 
We  come  face  to  face  with  the  crisis  hour 
when  we  demand  that  the  miracle  shall  be 
wrought;  that  all  past  sins  and  transgres- 
sions, errors  and  weaknesses  and  failures,  shall 
be  absolutely  blotted  out,  that  Ave  may  take 
strength  and  courage  to  begin  again.  It  is 
here  that  we  come  to  the  infinite  comfort, 
the  infinite  restoration  of  the  assurance,  that 
"  so  far  as  the  east  is  from  the  west,  so  far  hath 
He  removed  our  transgressions  from  us,"  — 
not  only  forgiven,  but  removed  them.  They 
lie  no  more  in  our  way,  —  obstacles  and 
stumbling-blocks.  There  is  a  new  way  and 
a  new  life.  We  have  only  to  arise  and  walk 
in  it. 

And  walk  in  it  with  fiiith,  with  happiness, 
with  spiritual  serenity  ;  with  that  exhilaration 
of  delight  which  can  only  come  by  throwing 
off  every  weight,  every  clog,  and  feeling  sure 


162  The  World  Beautiful. 

of  the  new  heaven  and  the  new  earth  that 
another  day  has  brought. 

The  glory  of  the  morning  is  far  more  than  a 
mere  phrase.  There  lies  around  it  something 
of  the  "  trailing  clouds  of  glory,"  in  which, 
the  poet  tells  us,  we  came  *'  from  God,  who  is 
our  home."  Tlie  day  lies  before  us  like  an 
unwritten  tablet,  to  be  inscribed  as  we  will ; 
like  a  fresh  canvas  on  which  we  shall  paint 
with  colors  all  our  own ;  or  like  the  mass  of 
clay  out  of  which  we  shall  ourselves  shape  the 
statue  that  waits  in  it  all  unformed. 

And  how  can  it  be  done  ?  By  the  heavenly 
magnetism,  the  spiritual  energy  which  may  be 
generated,  liberated,  as  tlie  chemist  would 
say ;  by  putting  one's  self  in  harmony  with 
the  Divine  Spirit ;  by  coming  into  that  attitude 
of  receptivity  to  the  Infinite  Love  and  Infinite 
Strength  which  renews  and  transforms  life. 
*'  In  the  morning  will  I  direct  my  prayer  unto 
Thee,  and  will  look  up.  And  let  all  them  that 
put  their  trust  in  Thee  rejoice ;  they  shall  be 
ever  giving  Thee  thanks  because  Thou  defend- 
est  them :  they  that  love  Thy  Name  shall  be 


A  Question  of  the  Day.  163 

joyful  in  Thee."  "  Thou  wilt  show  me  the 
path  of  life ;  in  Thy  presence  is  the  fulness  of 
joy,  and  at  Thy  right  hand  there  is  pleasure 
forevermore." 

"  Commit  thy  way  unto  the  Lord,  and  put 
thy  trust  in  Him,  and  He  shall  bring  it  to 
pass."  Who  can  remember  these  words  with- 
out realizing  their  infinite  depth  of  signifi- 
cance ?  We  have  only  to  accept  the  simple, 
literal  meaning,  and  absolutely  trust  in  it. 
"Create  in  me  a  new  heart;"  "Renew  my 
spirit,"  —  these  phrases  are  not  mere  rhetoric, 
not  merely  vague  words  to  be  read  in  a  Sun- 
day service  at  church ;  but  they  are  the  most 
practical  of  truths  applied  to  daily  living. 
"  Ask  and  ye  shall  receive,"  said  Jesus.  Wliat 
can  be  more  simple  ? 

However  full  days  or  weeks  or  years  have 
been  of  annoyance,  unrest,  trouble,  even  sin^ 
the  miracle  may  be  wrought  in  any  life  on  any 
morning,  by  which  all  the  unrest,  the  trial,  the 
sorrow  shall  be  lifted,  the  burden  removed, 
and  the  soul  caught  up  to  ineffable  joy  and 
life  and  light.     One  has  but  to  give  himself 


164  The  World  Beautiful, 

absolutely  to  the  communion  of  the  spirit,  — 
to  place  himself  in  receptivity  to  the  currents 
of  spiritual  energy  and  heavenly  magnetism. 
He  can  will  that  into  the  untried  day  before 
him  shall  come  only  wisdom  and  beauty  and 
peace  and  sweetness  and  love,  and  the 
miracle  —  if  it  be  one  —  shall  be  wrought. 
Undreamed  of  charm  shall  wait  upon  the 
hours.  The  friend,  unexpected  yet  always 
longed  for,  shall  appear.  The  event  so  de- 
sired, yet  hardly  anticipated,  shall  come  to 
pass.  Work,  in  all  its  lines  of  accomplish- 
ment, shall  take  on  new  achievements.  The 
hour  shall  be  regal  in  splendor  of  vision  and 
imagery,  and  there  shall  be  literally  a  new 
heaven  and  a  new  earth. 

Thoughts  not  only  "  let  us  into  realities," 
but  they  are  realities.  They  are  the  only 
realities,  —  the  only  forces  that  create  perma- 
nent results.  The  new  and  higher  life  on 
which  all  humanity  is  entering  will,  undoubt- 
edly, reduce  to  the  exactness  of  a  science  the 
potential  spiritual  development  that  shall  pro- 
duce at   will   this   magnetic   atmosphere,   in 


The  Laiv  of  Overcoming,  165 

which  the  desire  or  the  thought  shall  be 
vitalized  into  the  deed. 

Simply  to  come  to  this,  to  bring  our 
thought  "  in  unison  with  God's  great  thought," 
and  we  create  the  conditions  wherein  '*  what- 
soe'er is  willed  is  done."  \ye  may,  before 
leaving  our  own  room  in  the  morning,  abso- 
lutely create  the  conditions  of  the  day,  control 
and  shape  its  events,  select  its  actors,  and 
stamp  the  entire  drama  with  this  magnetic 
spiritual  vitality. 

***** 

The  Law        There  is,  perhaps,  no  one  term 

0  Over-     ^yi^Qgg  significance  is  less  truly  un- 
coming. 

derstood  than  that  of  overconnng. 

When  Jesus  said  :  "  In  the  world  ye  shall  have 
tribulation ;  but  be  of  good  cheer :  I  have  over- 
come the  world,"  there  was  something  meant 
quite  different  from  its  commonly  received 
interpretation.  Many  persons  have  trans- 
lated it  to  imply  that  in  this  world  —  this 
present  life  —  tribulation  is  the  appointed  lot 
of  man  ;  but  that  death  will  end  this,  and  by 


166  The  World  Beautiful, 

that  event  we  "  overcome  the  world,"  —  that 
is,  euter  into  joy  and  peace  as  inevitable  condi- 
tions of  the  life  beyond.  But  is  there  not  un- 
doubtedly a  far  deeper  and  nobler  meaning 
than  this  ?  The  "  world "  does  not  refer 
merely  to  life  on  this  planet,  —  the  threescore 
years  and  ten  allotted  to  man  in  this  present 
state  of  existence,  —  but  rather  it  has  refer- 
ence to  a  condition.  By  "  the  world "  is 
meant  all  that  materiality  which  must  be 
overcome  before  one  can  enter  into  that  state 
of  mind  which  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  and 
w^hich  may  be  the  condition  of  life  here  just 
as  surely  as  hereafter.  Tlie  initial  duty,  the 
highest  privilege,  of  life  is  to  overcome  the 
world  at  once.  After  that  all  else  is  easy. 
But  is  it  easy  to  achieve  this  overcoming? 
That  is  the  question. 

Still,  there  are  one  or  two  primary  truths 
that  every  one  accepts,  and  on  whose  basis  we 
can  all  meet.  These  form  a  favorable  point 
of  departure.  One,  for  instance,  is  the  famil- 
iar truth  that  the  life  of  the  spirit  is  that 
which  is  immortal,  and  which,  because  it  is 


The  Law  of  Overcoming.  167 

permanent,  while  physical  vitality  is  tempo- 
rary, is  the  lire  to  be  considered.  We  accept 
fully  the  truth  that  all  the  possessions  of  this 
world  can  serve  us,  at  the  utmost,  but  a  com- 
paratively brief  time ;  and  yet  we  object  vig- 
orously to  their  loss  or  their  curtailment, 
and  talk  about  a  man's  being  "ruined,"  be- 
cause, indeed,  he  has  lost  his  worldly  goods  ! 
In  short,  we  say  we  believe  —  in  fact,  we 
really  do  believe  —  one  thing,  and  yet  we 
act  every  day  of  our  lives  as  if  we  believ^ed 
something  else.  We  assert  that  we  have  here 
no  continuing  city ;  that  vast  possessions  are 
not  of  themselves  necessarily  of  significance  ; 
but  if  a  man  must  forsake  a  luxurious  house 
on  a  stately  and  beautiful  avenue,  and  remove 
his  household  gods  to  a  plain  home  on  an  un- 
fashionable street,  he  views  the  change  to  be 
one  of  signal  misfortune,  and  regards  himself 
as  an  unhappy  victim  of  malevolent  fate. 
Now,  is  it  not  possible  so  to  overcome  the 
world  that  we  can  hold  the  integrity  of  life 
above  the  incidental  and  accidental  changes 
of  material   things  ?     For,  while   submerged 


168  The  World  Beautiful. 

in  these  material  tilings,  which  is  being  '•^  in 
the  world,"  we  shall  assuredly  have  tribula- 
tion. Tribulation  is  inherent  in  the  very 
nature  of  material  things.  We  overcome  it 
only  as  we  rise  to  the  spiritual  plane.  "  Be 
of  good  cheer/'  said  Jesus  :  "  I  have  over- 
come the  world."  Where  He  has  gone  we 
may  follow.  If  He  overcame  the  world,  so 
may  we.     It  is  not  easy ;  it  is  possible. 

Not  being  easy  to  achieve,  it  is,  when  once 
attained,  a  condition  so  easy  that  it  preserves 
itself  and  progresses  by  its  own  momentum. 
One  who  is  succeeding  in  living  to  any  per- 
ceptible degree  the  spiritual  life  rather  than 
the  material,  realizes  for  himself  the  profound 
truth  in  the  assertion  of  the  Christ,  that  His 
yoke  is  easy  and  His  burden  is  light.  There 
is  in  it  the  peace  which  indeed  passeth  all 
understanding,  and  the  joy  that  the  world  can 
neither  give  nor  take  away.  The  man  of  in- 
telligence and  culture  may  measure  this  truth 
by  recognizing  how  much  greater  is  his  enjoy- 
ment than  that  of  the  ignorant  and  the  crude. 
Whatever  his   fortunes  or  misfortunes,  if  he 


The  Laio  of  Overcoming,  169 

has  a  love  of  literature,  of  art,  of  nature,  he 
has  resources  of  happiness  that  nothing  can 
remove.  He  can  bear  hardships  of  any  kind 
far  better  than  the  man  who  has  none  of 
these  inner  resources  on  which  to  draw. 
Now,  if  mental  culture  imparts  such  greater 
permanence  of  happiness,  by  how  much  more 
does  that  still  higher  culture  that  tends  to 
spirituality  of  life  ?  AVith  this  the  poor  man  is 
rich  and  the  rich  man  can  never  become  poor. 
Having  overcome  the  world,  the  world  can- 
not enojulf  or  overcome  him. 

A  mere  vague  and  nebulous  rhetorical  rhap- 
sody over  "  rising  to  a  higher  plane "  is  not 
worth  the  paper  on  which  it  is  written.  The 
readers  of  the  "  World  Beautiful "  would  be 
only  wise  to  turn  from  any  such  outpouring  as 
that,  if  it  held  no  related  significance  to  daily 
life.  But  as  the  life  of  culture  is  higher  than 
that  of  crude  ignorance,  so  is  the  life  of  spir- 
ituality higlier  than  that  merely  of  intellectual 
culture.  The  spiritualization  of  tliought  can 
be  acliieved  and  held  to  form  an  atmosphere 
in  which  the  individual  may  live  continually. 


170  Tlie  World  Beautiful. 

It  is  gained  by  the  perfect  acceptance  as  well 
as  the  clear  realization  that  to  hold  the  integ- 
rity of  the  spirit  is  the  one  essential  thing  of 
this  mortal  life.  Precisely  how  this  spirit, 
whose  temple  is  the  bodily  form,  is  to  be 
housed  and  clothed  and  fed  is  a  subordinate 
question.  The  real  consideration  is  how  shall 
it  grow  in  sympathy  and  tenderness  and 
consideration  for  others;  how  shall  it  feed  it- 
self on  great  thoughts  and  noble  aims ;  how 
shall  it  be  swift  to  recognize  and  avail  itself 
of  those  opportunities  of  usefulness  which  are 
its  best  channels  for  growth  ;  how  shall  it 
hold  its  clear,  direct,  and  intimate  relation 
with  the  Div^ine? 

The  submission  of  man's  nothing  —  perfect  to  God's 

all-complete, 
As  by  each  new  obeisance  in  spirit  I  climb  to  His 

feet. 

The  answer  is  in  serene  and  cheerful  obedi- 
ence and  in  all-believing  and  all-confident 
love.  Believe  and  love, —  all  the  duties  of 
the  world  and  all  the  privileges  of  heaven  are 
condensed  in  those  three  words.     Believe  and 


Li  Newness  of  Life.  171 

love.  Not  only  trust,  but  know,  believe. 
Hold  fast  to  the  conviction  that  the  forces  of 
life  are  divine.  Come  into  harmony  with 
them,  and  thus  live  above  the  plane  on  which 
discord  is  possible,  thus  overcome  the  world. 


''  With  those  elect, 
Who  seein  not  to  compete  or  strive. 
But  with  the  foremost  still  arrive, 

Prevailing  still : 
Spirits  with  whom  the  stars  connive 
To  work  their  will," 

William  Watson. 

In  New-        There  are  few  phrases  that  bear 

^^^3  0      within  them  more  inherent  buoy- 
I^ife-  1,1. 

ancy   and   exhilaration   than   that, 

"to  rise  in  newness  of  life."  It  is  a  thought 
to  live  by.  It  comes  to  one  in  the  morning 
on  first  waking,  and  instantly  he  is  conscious 
of  a  new  tide  of  exhilaration.  It  is  like  a 
ladder  on  which  his  spirit  climbs  and  all 
beautiful  things  seem  possible.  There  is  in- 
finite significance  in  the  injunction  of  Saint 
Paul  to  be  not  conformed  to  this  world,  but 


172  The  World  Beautiful 

transformed  by  the  renewing  of  spirit ;  and 
again,  when  he  asserts  that  to  be  carnally 
minded  is  death,  but  to  be  spiritually  minded 
is  life  and  peace,  the  thought  is  the  most  prac- 
tical and  simple.  Because  we  live  by  our  con- 
victions and  our  enthusiasms,  our  visions  and 
our  ideals.  Those  are  the  properties,  so  to 
speak,  of  that  spiritual  world  which  the  spirit 
inhabits,  even  though  it  is  held  to  earth  by 
dwelling  in  its  physical  body.  That  which 
we  habitually  see,  as  in  vision  ;  those  condi- 
tions in  which  we  picture  ourselves  in  half- 
unconscious  imaginings,  are  those  which  shall 
be  realized  in  outward  i\\ct.  And  so,  when 
on  the  clear  mirror  surface  of  a  perfectly  un- 
tried day  we  see  ourselves  rising  in  newness 
of  life,  transformed  by  the  renewing  of  spirit, 
we  grasp  thus  the  key  to  achievement  and 
happiness  and  blessedness. 

The  initial  point  is  to  bring  the  mind  into 
an  attitude  of  love.  Hatred,  discord  of  any 
kind,  forms  an  impassable  barrier  between  the 
spirit  and  the  joy  and  exaltation  of  the  spirit- 
ual atmosphere.     Hatred  is  Hades ;  and  for 


In  Newness  of  Life.  173 

one  to  keep  that  attitude  is  to  sliut  himself  in 
prison,  and  exile  himself  wholly  from  all  tliat 
is  life.  Hatred  is  mental  paralysis,  and  it 
forms  one  of  those  circles  of  hell  that  Dante 
saw.  Love,  on  the  contrary,  is  magnetic.  It 
offers  the  open  vision.  It  is  not  only  recep- 
tive, but  it  attracts  all  germs  of  noble  ac- 
tion and  of  fortunate  combinations.  It  is 
not  passive,  but  active ;  not  negative,  but 
positive. 

Every  morning  one  holds  in  his  own  hands 
this  marvellous  power  to  rise  in  newness  of 
life  and  to  shape  conditions.  The  law  by 
which  this  may  be  done  is  as  definite  and  as 
inevitable  as  is  the  law  of  gravitation.  It  is 
now  time  for  the  Newton  of  the  spiritual 
world  to  arise  and  announce  these  principles 
by  which  the  soul  may  formulate  its  con- 
ditions. All  the  trouble,  the  defeat,  the  dis- 
aster, the  gloom,  and  the  conflict  of  the  world 
is  simply  due  to  the  fact  that  man  has  never 
asserted  his  birthright.  He  is  not  only  "  the 
heir  of  all  the  ages,"  but  he  is  the  heir  to  all 
spiritual  treasure  and  power.     Yet,  instead  of 


174  The  World  Beautiful 

looking  to  heaven,  he  looks  down  to  earth ; 
instead  of  asserting  his  power  to  create  con- 
ditions, he  allows  himself  to  be  entangled  with 
material  conditions,  chaotic  and  meaningless, 
and  involved  in  trouble,  disaster,  and  defeat. 
It  is  as  if  one  should  sit  down  in  the  midst  of 
skeins  of  silk,  and  allow  the  filaments  to  over- 
flow in  knots  and  tangles  all  around  him,  and 
then  direct  his  time  and  energies  to  the  minute 
untying  of  knots,  instead  of  arising  and  shak- 
ing them  all  off  at  one  movement.  "  All 
power  is  given  to  INIe  in  heaven  and  earth," 
said  Jesus.  And  He  promises  that  the  very 
works  He  has  done  man  shall  do  also,  "  and 
greater  works  than  these."  Are  we  to  take 
these  assurances  as  a  mere  dead  letter,  —  treat 
them  as  rhetorical  figures,  rather  tlian  read  in 
them  the  living  truth  ?  Why,  tliese  assur- 
ances not  only  offer  a  privilege,  —  they  confer 
on  man  a  responsibility.  It  is  his  business  to 
arise  and  assert  his  spiritual  birthright,  —  to 
insist  on  his  own  power  over  conditions.  All 
fulfilment  of  duty  lies  in  this. 

The  condition  of  this  assertive  success  is 


In  Newness  of  Life.  175 

love.  This  is  the  quality  wliich  produces  that 
magnetic  atmosphere  in  which  creative  exer- 
cise is  possible.  In  this  atmosphere  alone 
shall  he  rise  to  newness  of  life. 

It  is  my  most  earnest  purpose  to  convince 
the  reader  of  the  literal  truth,  the  absolute 
practicality,  of  these  assertions.  As  a  bit 
of  decorative  verbal  embroidery,  they  would 
not  be  worth  the  paper  on  which  they  are 
written ;  but  as  the  most  important  truth  in 
the  life  of  this  century,  —  an  age  in  which 
man  is  beginning  to  realize  the  powers  that 
have  largely  lain  dormant  in  the  soul,  —  to 
that  truth  the  most  earnest  consideration  may 
be  urged.  Psychic  power  has  been  mistakenly 
regarded  as  being,  at  best,  for  purposes  of 
mere  phenomena  and  wonder-working.  This 
is  the  least  of  its  significance.  Its  true  place 
is  as  the  practical  working  force  of  daily  life. 
No  one  has  any  moral  right  to  live  in  a  hap- 
hazard way,  at  the  mere  mercy  of  circum- 
stances. It  is  as  wild  as  it  w^ould  be  for  a 
rational  being  to  put  out  to  sea  in  a  row-boat. 
It  is  a  part  of  the  accomplishment  of  true 


176  The  World  Beautiful 

acliievenient  to  give  a  margin  of  time  out  of 
every  twenty-four  hours  to  the  clear  shaping 
—  the  psychic  stamping,  so  to  speak  —  of  the 
day.  The  hours  lie  before  one  like  plastic 
clay,  ready  to  take  the  design  of  his  spiritual 
impress. 

We  live  in  a  world  where  visible  and  tan- 
gible things  exist,  to  which,  on  the  immaterial 
side,  tliere  are  spiritual  correspondences.  One 
of  these  things  is  money.  The  higher  order  of 
people  are  apt  to  say  there  are  better  things 
tlian  money ;  tliat  there  is  the  w^ealth  of  aspi- 
ration, of  noble  purpose,  of  generous  and 
liberal  sympathies,  of  good  health  and  right 
feeling.  And  this  is  deeply  true  ;  and  if  one 
w^ere  to  choose  from  financial  riches  on  the 
one  side,  and  spiritual  riches  on  the  other,  he 
who  would  choose  the  former  rather  than  the 
latter  would  be  a  madman  rather  than  a 
rational  human  being.  x\ll  the  same,  how- 
ever, there  is  no  truth  in  a  sort  of  vague, 
traditional  feeling  that  material  poverty  is 
necessarily  synonymous  with  spiritual  wealth, 
or  that  material  wealth  is  synonymous  w^ith 


In  Neiviiess  of  Life.  177 

spiritual  poverty.  Tliat  this  not  unfrequently 
is  true  does  not  in  the  least  argue  that  it  is 
necessarily  so,  or  that  it  is  an  ideal  state  of 
affairs.  Still,  when  wealth  is  gained  by  a  man 
giving  himself  over,  body  and  soul,  to  material 
accumulation  ;  when  it  is  gained  by  grinding 
down  the  wages  of  employes,  by  the  oppression 
and  selfishness  of  all  competitive  industry, 
why,  then,  to  amass  financial  wealth  is  at  the 
fearful  price  of  spiritual  development. 

The  new  trend  of  advanced  spiritual  thought, 
which  proclaims  that  poverty  is  a  disease,  has 
right  premises.  "  For  the  earth  is  full  of  the 
riches  of  the  Lord."  "  And  the  Father  know- 
eth  what  things  ye  have  need  of  before  ye  ask 
Him."  "And  whatsoever  ye  ask,  believing, 
ye  shall  receive."  We  need  merely  to  believe 
really  what  we  say  we  believe.  We  read  and 
repeat  all  these  passages  as  meaningless  forms  ; 
but  they  are  vivid  and  vital  and  magnetic  with 
the  most  infinite  significance.  That  marvel- 
lous current  of  progress  which  runs  through 
everything  in  time,  and  which  we  call  the 
divine    will,    would    work    its   undreamed-of 

12 


178  The  ^Yorld  Beaidifiil 

potency  in  each  individual  life  if  the  individual 
could  bring  himself  into  a  condition  whereby 
he  might  receive. 

Now,  it  will  be  readily  seen  that  all  the 
immaterial  world  is  absolutely  dependent  on 
conditions.  Human  love  or  friendship  cannot 
give  its  gifts  where  they  are  unwelcome  or 
unheeded.  Your  friend  may  long  to  pour  out 
to  you  the  treasures  of  his  love,  his  care,  his 
tenderness,  his  service ;  but  unless  you  re- 
spond to  them,  he  cannot  give  them.  A  gift 
presupposes  two  persons  always,  —  not  only 
one  to  give,  but  one,  also,  to  receive. 

In  the  same  way,  to  receive  aid  from  the 
spiritual  side  of  life,  where  all  infinite  treasure 
and  potency  exist,  one  must  achieve  the  right 
conditions.  These  are  more  common  than  is 
altogether  realized;  but  they  exist,  as  yet, 
only  in  isolated  instances,  in  fragments  of  ex- 
perience, and  are  related  as  either  something 
of  very  curious  coincidence  or  else  of  divine 
aid,  and  he  who  has  experienced  it,  or  he  who 
narrates  it,  hardly  knows  which  name  to  apply. 
History  is  full  of  these  instances  as  occurring 


In  Newness  of  Life.  179 

in  the  lives  of  notable  people  in  sudden  and 
unforeseen  emergencies.  And  there  are,  per- 
haps, few  persons  who  have  not  experienced 
something  of  the  kind  in  their  own  lives.  One 
was  told  me  recently  by  an  artist  in  Boston. 
This  young  lady  passed  last  summer  on  the 
North  Shore.  At  one  time  she  was  very  much 
in  need  of  some  money,  and  she  could  not  see 
any  way  in  which  she  could,  on  the  visible 
and  material  side  of  life,  expect  it.  But  she 
was  not  dismayed.  "My  help  cometh  from 
the  Lord,  who  made  heaven  and  earth,"  she 
repeated  to  herself,  half  unconsciously,  as  she 
walked  one  beautiful  morning  on  the  beach. 
As  Omar  Khayyam  puts  it,  she  '^  sent  her  soul 
into  the  invisible."  She  needed  the  money; 
it  was  right  she  should  have  it ;  and  she  be- 
lieved that  out  of  the  unspeakable  fulness  of 
infinite  riches  it  would  be,  in  some  way,  given 
to  her.  And  it  was.  Three  checks  from 
three  friends  came  to  her  at  once  ;  yet  not  to 
one  of  these  had  she  made  the  slightest  appeal, 
or  even  reference  to  her  need  of  the  moment. 
Was  this  mere  coincidence  ?     I,  for  one,  do 


180  The  World  Beautiful 

not  believe  that  it  was.  I  believe  the  lady 
touched  the  key  that  thus  responded ;  and  I 
believe  that  there  is,  riglit  here,  a  law,  as  yet 
undiscovered  and  unformulated,  but  as  defi- 
nite and  inevitable  as  that  which  holds  the 
stars  in  their  courses.  And,  beyond  this,  I 
believe  more,  —  that  humanity  is  now  on  the 
verge  of  the  discovery  and  the  development  of 
this  law.  I  could  fill  pages  with  these  frag- 
mentary instances,  personally  related  to  me  by 
those  who  have  experienced  them  ;  and  biog- 
raphy is  also  full  of  them, — and  he  who  runs 
may  read.  It  is  just  as  much  the  part  of 
common  sense,  of  social  economics,  to  en- 
deavor now  to  formulate  this  law,  and  adjust 
life  to  it,  as  it  is  to  conduct  all  our  opera- 
tions in  harmony  with  the  law  of  gravitation. 
It  is  the  same  part  of  mental  sanity.  The 
time  has  come  for  people  to  live  as  those 

"  Spirits  with  whom  the  stars  connive 
To  work  their  will." 

]\Ian,  made  in  the  image  of  the  divine, 
shares  to  some  possible  degree  the  creative 
power,  —  the  power  to   shape  conditions,  to 


In  Netvness  of  Life.  181 

control  circumstances,  to  range  himself  with 
the  creative  forces.  It  is  ignoble  to  sit  down 
and  repine,  or  even  to  endure  passively  limi- 
tations which  energy  and  faith  would  easily 
surmount. 

Humanity  needs  to  draw  on  its  resources 
of  Christian  faith.  They  have  been  stored  up 
in  accumulating  quantity  for  eighteen  hundred 
years ;  but  religion  is  not  a  decorative  attribute 
to  be  contemplated  at  stated  periods,  but  is,  in- 
stead, the  motor  of  life.  Religion  is  not  merely 
theology,  any  more  than  courtesy  and  civility 
are  love.  Theology  presents  the  intellectual 
theories  and  principles  of  religion,  as  love  pre- 
sents those  principles  of  civility  and  courtesy 
which  result  in  the  harmony  of  agreeable  liv- 
ing. Ecclesiasticism  has  done  a  certain  w^ork 
in  formulating^  reliG:ious  tendencies.  Prescribed 
forms  and  appointed  hours  are  undoubted  aids 
to  devotion ;  but  when  the  heart  lifts  itself 
up  to  the  Lord  by  an  irresistible  impulse,  for- 
mal restraints  fall  off  of  their  own  dead  weight. 
Certainly,  the  Christianity  which  does  not 
manifest  itself  in  consideration,  courtesy,  and 
generosity,  is  not  worth  the  name;  but   be- 


182  The  World  Beautiful. 

yond  these  is  more,  —  the  iiifiiiite  potency  of 
faith.  Nor  is  faith  an  abstract  quality.  It  is 
as  positive  a  force  as  is  steam  or  electricity. 
It  is  infinite  and  resistless  in  its  action. 
As  the  spiritual  motor,  it  is  as  much  more 
potent  than  any  material  motor,  as  spirit  is 
more  potent  than  matter.  There  is  no  desti- 
tution, no  poverty  in  the  universe.  "  The 
earth  mfull  of  the  riches  of  the  Lord."  These 
riches  are  held  in  solution,  as  it  were,  in  the 
spiritual  atmosphere,  and  they  can  be  crystal- 
lized and  precipitated  by  complying  with  the 
conditions  of  the  spiritual  law  by  means  of 
which  their  distribution  is  governed.  Every 
genuine  demand  on  this  has  the  same  direct 
force  that  a  message  sent  by  telegraph  might 
have  on  the  ordinary  plane  of  life.  There 
need  be  no  more  hesitancy  in  accepting  this 
assertion  than  tliere  need  be  in  accepting 
the  truth  of  the  law  of  gravitation.  Psychic 
power  is  the  true  creative  power,  and  the  one 
that  humanity  is  now  to  learn  how  to  use  in- 
telligently ;  as,  within  the  past  half-centurv,  it 
has  learned  to  use  the  lightning  intelligently. 


In  Newness  of  Life.  183 

In  that  marvellous  occult  book,  "  The  Per- 
fect Way,"  its  author,  Dr.  Anna  Kingsford, 
says :  — 

"  The  enemy  of  spiritual  vision  is  always  ma- 
terialism. It  is,  therefore,  by  the  demateriali- 
zation  of  himself  that  man  obtains  the  seeing 
eye  and  hearing  ear  in  respect  of  divine  things. 
Dematerialization  consists  not  in  the  separation 
of  the  soul  from  the  body,  but  in  the  purifica- 
tion of  both  soul  and  body  from  engrossment 
by  the  things  of  sense.  It  is  but  another  ex- 
ample of  the  doctrine  of  correspondence." 

Man  is,  primarily,  a  divine  being,  and  only 
secondarily  a  human  being.  It  is  the  spiritual 
world,  and  among  spiritual  forces,  in  which 
he  should  dwell. 

What  would  be  thought  of  an  accomplished 
woman,  with  exquisite  tastes  and  extended 
culture,  who,  instead  of  dwelling:  with  hisfh 
thoughts,  and  living  in  her  drawing-room, 
her  library,  her  music-room,  —  instead  of  oc- 
cupying her  time  with  friends  and  literature 
and  art,  —  should  instead  choose  to  spend 
it    in    the    basement    of    her    house,    cook- 


184  The  World  Beautiful 

ing,  launclrying,  scrubbing,  and  all  the  while 
fretful  and  complaining  and  distressed  and 
depressed  because  of  her  hard  and  gloomy 
life? 

The  comparison  applies  to  all  humanity. 
Let  one  live  not  in  the  basement,  but  in  the 
upper  stories.  Let  him  assert  his  own  power 
and  tastes,  and  his  inalienable  birthright  to  be 
A  partaker  in  the  divine  inheritance.  Let  him 
arise  in  newness  of  life. 

If  he  will  learn  the  law  of  psychic  force,  he 
need  not  longer  "  compete  or  strive." 

He  will  learn  how,  with  the  foremost,  to 
arrive  at  the  desired  achievement.  He  will 
acquire  the  art  of  allowing  the  past,  with 
whatever  errors,  sins,  faults,  follies,  or  igno- 
rances entangled,  to  slip  out  of  sight,  and  he 
will  turn  his  face  to  tlie  future.  He  will 
look  toward  the  morning.  Every  day  he  will 
arise  in  newness  of  life,  and  enter  more  nearly 
into  tliat  magnetic  atmosphere  where  all 
achievement  is  easy,  because  accomplished 
through  the  creative  powers ;  where  all  hap- 
piness  and   exaltation   of  life  shall   lie,  and 


The  Heavenly  Vision.  185 

where  the  days  will  thrill  and  pulsate  with 
joy,  as  if  lived  in  an  Enchanted  Land. 


* 


"  I  was  not  disobedient  unto  the  Heavenly  Vision." 

The  There    are    few   words   that   so 

Heavenly  thrill  one  with  a  sense  of  new  and 
Vision,  diviner  possibilities,  that  are  so 
deeply  freighted  with  the  positiveness  of  the 
higher  life,  as  these.  They  comprehend  all 
the  greatness  which  results  from  the  entire 
spiritualization  of  thought,  all  tliat  glow  and 
gladness  in  noble  endeavor  and  successful 
achievement  which  comes  because  one  has  not 
been  disobedient  unto  the  Heavenly  Vision. 
So  far  as  this  obedience  is  regarded  in  the  light 
of  limitation,  of  sacrifice,  of  exaction,  of  resign- 
ing a  very  certain  and  positive  and  tangible 
satisfaction  for  a  vague  and  intangible  and  in- 
explicable thing,  for  one  having  no  significance 
save  to  the  mystic  or  to  the  cloistered  monk,  — 
so  far  from  that,  this  obedience  is  the  very 
reverse.    It  is  the  positive  and  not  the  negative 


186  The  World  Beautiful 

good ;  it  is  walking  in  illumination  rather 
than  stumbling  in  darkness ;  it  is  holding 
the  clew  to  the  labyrinth  instead  of  groping 
through  it  blindly  ;  it  is  movement  with,  rather 
than  against,  the  force  of  spiritual  gravitation  ; 
it  is  like  rowing  with  the  tide,  cutting  the  wood 
with  the  grain ;  it  is  indeed  to  have  found  the 
secret  of  success.  It  is  to  gain  the  vantage- 
ground  whereunto  all  things  shall  be  added. 

There  is  no  possibility  of  doubting  that 
humanity  is  on  the  threshold  of  a  life  so  much 
higher  and  more  potent  than  the  present  that 
to  enter  on  its  realization  will  make  a  new 
heaven  and  a  new  earth.  The  change  will  be 
as  great  as  that  from  the  grub  to  the  butterfly. 
Humanity  will  find  its  wings.  INIental  and 
psychic  power  will  assert  their  sway.  The 
entire  scenery  of  life  will  be  transformed. 
Unsuspected  stores  of  energy  will  be  libe- 
rated. ]\Iankind  will  live  in  exaltation  and 
enthusiasm.  There  will  be  abounding  life, 
not  plodding  existence.  Life  will  then  be 
what  Emerson  says  it  should  always  be,  — 
an  ecstasy.     The  psychic  transformation  that 


The  Heavenly  Vision.  187 

is  drawing  near  will  give  far  more  wonderful 
results  than  any  of  the  splendid  conquests 
of  science  in  the  past. 

The  moment  we  come  into  the  realm  of 
spirit  all  things  are  possible.  What  on  the 
natural  plane  would  seem  miracle  becomes  as 
simple  as  the  most  every-day  occurrence.  It 
seems  not  impossible  that  the  earth  may  be 
the  theatre  of  a  new  life,  —  of  newness  of  life 
on  a  plane  heretofore  undescried,  and  which, 
if  conceived  of  at  all,  has  been  believed  could 
only  wait  tlie  experiences  of  the  soul  after  the 
change  called  death.  But  let  humanity  once 
come  into  the  actual  realization  that  the  human 
race  is  a  race  of  spirits,  —  of  spirits  dwelling 
in  temporary  physical  bodies  ;  that  those  bodies 
are  the  instrument  through  which  the  spirit 
comes  in  contact  with  material  life  and  gains 
its  earthly  experience,  but  that  the  body  need 
not  limit  the  power  of  spirit,  but  be  used  for 
spiritual  power  to  work  through,  —  and  life  is 
altered  at  once.  This  is  the  transformation  of 
energy  that  is  drawing  near. 

The  unhappiness  of  life  is  limited  to  the 


188  The  World  Beautiful 

material  and  tlie  temporal ;  its  happiness  lies 
in  the  spiritual  and  the  permanent.  Ones 
birthright  is  happiness.  It  is  as  freely  offered 
as  the  sunshine  and  the  air.  It  is  a  spiritual 
state,  and  not  conditioned  by  material  limits. 
Not  only  is  it  every  man's  privilege  to  be 
happy  ;  it  is  his  duty,  his  manifest  obliga- 
tion. Happiness  is  the  condition  of  his  higher 
achievements  and  his  higher  usefulness.  It  is 
tlie  exliilaration  of  the  highest  energy,  and 
lends  wings. 

The  problem  of  fate  and  free-will  is  one 
that  has  tortured  many  a  life  as  its  curious 
and  contradictory  phases  are  studied.  No 
one  can  observe  tlioughtfully  the  pl.enomena 
of  living ;  can  note  how,  like  a  prearranged 
plan,  little  details  and  events  fit  into  each 
other  as  if  all  were  parts  of  one  great  whole, 
without  recognizing  a  unity  which  we  call  ftite. 
Hawthorne  has  said :  "  Our  individual  fate 
exists  in  the  limestone  of  time.  AVe  fancy 
that  we  carve  it  out,  but  its  ultimate  shape 
is  prior  to  all  our  efforts."  Certainly,  the  days 
and  their  train  of  events  seem  to  us  oftcncr 


The  Heavenly  Vision.  189 

found  than  made.  We  close  our  eyes  at  night 
with  as  little  idea  of  what  may  come  into  the 
next  day,  even,  of  our  own  lives,  as  into  that  of 
our  neighbor's.  What,  indeed,  may  not  lie  in 
wait  for  us?  Fortune  or  ill  fortune,  death 
or  illness,  or  a  sudden  surprise  of  joy.  Vfe 
are  as  utterly  powerless  to  predict  our  own  im- 
mediate future  as  that  of  the  veriest  strano-er. 
Even  more;  we  are  hardly  less  powerless  to 
predict  our  own  acts,  our  own  states  pf  mind 
that  may  be  induced  by  action  and  reaction 
of  currents  of  activity  still  undiscerned.  We 
go  on  to  meet  these  unknown  days  freighted 
with  the  incalculable,  like  ships  sailing  over 
an  unknown  ocean,  perhaps  to  encounter  ice- 
bergs or  tempests,  perhaps  to  sail  stately  and 
serene  throuo-h  summer  seas  under  a  summer 
sky. 

*'  It  may  be  that  the  gulfs  will  wash  us  down ; 
It  may  be  we  shall  reach  the  Happy  Isles." 

But  as  the  mariner  has  his  compass  and  the 
pole  star,  as  the  Israelites  had  the  pillar  of  fire 
by  night  and  the  cloud  by  day,  so  to  each  is 
revealed   the  Heavenly  Vision,  —  the  special 


190  The  World  Beaiitifid, 

guidance  and  illumination  for  his  own  pathway. 
When  the  impatient  word  is  repressed,  and 
one  strives  for  patience  and  serenity  and 
love ;  when  the  uncharitable  word  is  unsaid, 
the  suspicion  checked,  and  a  finer  —  and 
almost  invariably  truer,  because  finer  —  con- 
fidence given  in  its  place ;  when  the  aid  it 
comes  in  our  way  to  give  is  gladly  done 
because  it  seemed  a  special  and  individual 
appeal,  —  is  it  not  then  that  we  are  obedient 
to  the  Heavenly  Vision? 

"  Whatsoever  thing  thou  doost 
To  the  least  of  mine  and  lowest, 
That  thou  doest  unto  Me." 

The  Heavenly  Vision  shines  upon  us  in  our 
ideals.  There  are  persons  who  say  they  must 
live  the  worldly  life,  —  the  life  of  getting  and 
greed  and  gain,  because,  indeed,  they  have 
not  wealth,  because  they  must  *^get  a  liv- 
ing," and  they  seem  to  believe  that  "  a  living  " 
is  something  achieved  only  out  of  a  scramble 
of  competition  and  selfishness.  In  getting 
this  living,  they  omit  to  live,  —  a  matter  that 
the  unprejudiced  mind  might  fancy  of  equal 


The  Heavenly  Vision.  191 

importance.  But  even  this  "living,"  whose 
getting  appears  to  absorb  so  much  ill-directed 
energy,  is  infinitely  better  acliieved  on  the 
higher  plane  of  unselfishness  and  of  love. 
The  effort  to  protect  our  neighbor  in  his 
rights  and  privileges  best  insures  our  own. 
The  joy  w^e  feel  in  his  gladness  brightens 
our  own  life.  The  rejoicing  in  his  prosperity 
is  the  most  inevitable  passport  to  our  own,  for 
all  humanity  is  so  closely  interwoven  and  in- 
terlinked. To  take  no  thought  for  the  mor- 
row, for  the  morrow  shall  take  thought  for  the 
things  of  itself,  is  simply  to  keep  in  the  right 
current  of  noble  activities,  to  follow  the  Heav- 
enly Vision.  Thus  there  need  be  no  anxiety. 
Life  becomes  harmony  and  peace.  It  unfolds 
by  a  law  of  spiritual  evolution. 

We  are  just  as  much  in  the  presence  of  the 
Lord  here  to-day,  this  hour,  as  we  shall  ever 
be,  except  that  as  one  grows  more  spiritual 
and  less  material,  as  his  perceptions  are  opened 
to  spiritual  things  and  his  temperament  be- 
comes more  responsive  to  spiritual  influences, 
he  is,  of  course,  more  in  the  presence  of  the 


192  The  World  Beautiful 

Lord  than  when  he  was  steeped  and  stifled  in 
the  material  life.  The  man  wlio  can  see  pos- 
sesses the  sunshine  more  than  tlie  man  who 
cannot  see,  although  the  sunshine  is  the  same 
all  the  time.  We  are  spirits  now,  or  we  are 
nothing.  We  are  dwelling  in  the  body  as  an 
instrument  through  which  the  spirit  must 
work  in  order  to  work  in  a  physical  world. 
We  are  spirits,  but  spirits  embodied.  Does 
not  this  realization  invest  this  part  of  our  life 
with  a  new  dignity,  as  well  as  a  new  responsi- 
bility ?  This  world,  so  far  as  it  is  anything,  is 
a  spiritual  world  now,  though  in  a  cruder  and 
lower  state  of  development  than  that  which 
the  spirit  enters  after  leaving  the  body.  But 
the  forces  that  govern  it  are  of  spirit;  for 
there  is  no  force  but  spirit.  The  life  of  vege- 
tation is  but  the  dawning  of  spiritual  life.  It 
is  all  under  the  great  law  of  evolution. 

To  live  truly  and  see  clearly  in  this  world  of 
spiritual  forces  that  we  are  in  ;  to  discern  our 
appointed  way  and  hearken  to  the  angelic 
guidance  that  attends  each  and  all  of  us  ;  to 
discover  and  to  follow  the  polarity  of  our  owa 


The  Heavenly  Vision. 


nature,  and  thus  realize  our  own  ideal,  is  to 
make  life  a  success.  This  only  is  success.  All 
else,  without  this  realization,  is  failure.  It  is 
failure  to  suppose  that  happiness  is  conditioned 
by  possessions  or  by  surroundings.  It  is  fail- 
ure to  take  it  for  granted  that  happiness  is  not 
intended  for  this  life  but  is  to  be  the  miracle 
of  some  other  in  some  vague  and  unknown 
future.  It  is  a  mistake  to  be  anxious  and 
worried  over  a  future,  because,  indeed,  though 
we  are  fortunate  to-day  or  this  year,  we  may 
not  be  in  ten  years  from  this  time.  The  same 
Power  that  upholds  us  to-day  will  uphold  us 
any  number  of  years  from  to-day,  if  we  keep 
in  touch  with  spiritual  forces.  The  power  is 
in  ourselves,  the  impediment  is  in  ourselves ; 
and  instead  of  an  exclusive  struggle  to  lay  up 
money  to  provide  for  a  far-away  future,  should 
be  the  effort  to  come  into  possession  of  the  finer 
forces  ;  to  enter  into  the  familiar  knowledsfe  of 
the  apportionment  and  the  use  of  our  spiritual 
powers,  whose  use  opens  to  us  the  infinite 
w^orld ;  to  live  in  touch  with  all  this  divine 
life  that,  once  gained,  offers  to  us  that  which 

13 


194  The  World  Beautiful. 

eye  hath  not  seen  nor  mind  conceived,  —  the 
infinite  wonder  and  beauty  of  spirituality. 
Only  as  life  is  held  receptive  to  these  divine 
influences  does  it  become  great,  and  worthy  to 
receive  the  leading  of  the  Heavenly  Vision  1 


THE   END. 


Messrs.  Roberts  Brothers'  Publications. 
THIRD    EDITION. 

jfrom  Bteamlanb  Sent^ 

A  Volume  of  Poems*  By  Lilian  Whitingf,  author  of 
''The  World  Beautiful/^  Cover  desigfn  by  Louise 
Graves*     J6mo«     Cloth*     Price,  $1*25* 


Many  of  Miss  Whiting's  verses  are  permeated  with  the  longing,  the  loneliness 
and  the  wonder  of  one  who  looks  with  chastened  heart  and  seeking  eyes  after  those 
of  her  beloved  who  have  passed  into  the  world  invisible;  but  her  tears  alwa}'s  form 
prisms  for  the  rainbow  of  hope,  and  in  her  saddest  songs  there  are  notes  of  faith  and 
healing.  —  L.  A.  C. 

This  verse  gives  the  keynote  of  the  stanzas  throughout  the  volume.  They  are 
replete  with  poetic  feeling  and  tender  sentiment,  musical  in  diction,  and  chaste  in 
expression.  If  the  feeling  comes  over  us  as  we  read  them  that  they  are  little  more 
than  echoes  of  grander  work,  we  must  admit  that  they  are  very  sweet  echoes,  and  quite 
well  worth  listening  to.  —  hiter-Ocean. 

The  verses  have  a  warmth  of  feeling  in  their  direct  appeal  to  emotional  sympathy 
that  is  sure  to  find  a  responsive  chord  in  the  hearts  of  all  those  readers  who  value 
poetry,  not  for  its  technical  perfection,  but  for  the  manner  in  which  it  voices  the  joys 
and  sorrows  of  everyday  life  and  those  aspirations  which,  at  favored  moments,  tend 
toward  the  higher  ideals  of  personal  conduct.  It  is  rare,  indeed,  that  one  comes  upon 
a  volume  wherein  the  finer  feminine  qualities  are  so  artlessly  made  evident.  It  has 
the  personal  note,  and  that  note  is  always  fine  and  true.  —  The  Beacon. 

A  dainty  little  volume  of  dainty  little  poems  is  "From  Dreamland  Sent,"  by 
Lilian  Whiting,  and  worthy  the  pen  of  the  author  of"  The  World  Beautiful."  Those 
who  have  read  her  other  books  and  writines  will  know  what  to  expect  in  this  volume 
of  poems.  They  are  mostly  poems  of  the  heart,  of  love,  of  sympathy,  and  affection. 
Lilian  Whiting  is  by  nature  a  poet,  whether  she  writes  in  prose  or  verse,  and  her 
verses  are  flowing  and  melodious.  Repeated  expressions  of  praise  are  not  needed.  — 
Boston  Sunday  Times. 

While  none  of  them  can  be  classed  among  really  great  poems,  yet  there  is  a 
sweetness  and  a  charm  abnut  many  of  tJiem  that  will  linger  in  the  memory  like  strains 
of  music.  They  look  on  the  bright  side  of  life,  and  are  full  of  hope  and  faith  and 
courage.  —  The  A  dvance. 

Miss  Lilian  Whiting's  poems  are  notable  for  the  beautiful  thoughts  which  they 
embody,  for  the  exquisite  taste  with  which  these  thoughts  are  treated,  and  for  the 
sweet  expressiveness  of  the  words  in  which  they  are  dressed.  Her  verse  is  like  a  bit 
of  sunlit  landscape  on  a  May  morning;  it  carries  one's  mind  away  from  stress  and 
turmoil  and  asserts  a  suggestion  of  peace  and  rest,  — not  that  peace  which  comes  in 
the  evening  of  life,  as  the  result  of  work  well  done,  but  that  peace  which  stands 
unperturbed  in  the  midst  of  struggle,  the  operation  of  a  quiet  mind  fixed  on  permanent 
things.  —  Boston  Herald. 

In  this  litde  book  Lilian  Whiting  has  offered  to  the  world  about  seventy  bits  of 
verse,  graceful,  tender,  and  true,  appealing  to  what  is  best  in  the  human  heart.  — 
Independent. 

These  beautiful  brief  poems,  inscribed  to  Kate  Field,  all  have  a  meaning  and  a 
purpose  ;  they  are  artistic  in  form  and  finish,  full  of  genuine  inspiration.  —  Wovian's 
Journal. 


Mailed^  postpaid.,  on  receipt  of  the  price,  by  the  piiblisJters, 
ROBERTS   BROTHERS,  Boston. 


Messrs.  Robe?'ts^  Brothers  Publications, 
EIGHTH  THOUSAND. 

THE  WORLD  BEAUTIFUL 

(SECOND  SERIES). 

By  LILIAN    WHITING, 

Author  of  "  The  World  Beautiful  ^^  and  '■'•From  Dreamland  Sent.'"' 
J6mo.    Cloth.    Price,  $1.00.      White  and  Gold,  $1.25. 


Rarely  does  a  book  appear  more  rich  in  tliought,  suggestive,  help- 
ful, practical,  unique,  and  forcible  in  its  lessons  for  daily  life.  — J .  IV. 
Cliadwick. 

"Kind  words  and  pure  thoughts"  is  the  text  from  which  Lilian 
Whiting  delivers  some  of  the  best  lay  sermons  ever  composed.  The 
thousands  of  readers  who  were  helped  and  uplifted  in  moral  tone  by 
The  World  Beautiful,  first  series,  will  be  glad  of  this  second  in- 
stalment of  essays  that  are  more  than  essays;  which  combine  a  high 
level  of  literary  achievement  with  a  consecration  of  purpose  and  a  hap- 
piness of  style,  method,  and  illustration  rarely  surpassed.  To  the 
weary,  be  it  in  well  doing  or  in  evil  doing,  this  little  volume  will  come 
like  a  reviving  draught,  instilling  courage,  inspiration,  strength.  —  Coti- 
cord  Monitor. 

The  book  constitutes  a  noble  appeal  for  higher  and  more  conse- 
crated living. — Boston  Advertiser. 

The  second  series  of  essays  by  Lilian  Whiting,  collected  under  the 
title  of  The  World  Beautiful,  admirably  sustains  the  fine  intellectual 
quality  and  the  ideal  of  spiritual  aspiration  which  found  such  graceful 
expression  in  a  former  volume  from  the  same  hand.  Miss  Whiting  in 
this  later  series  dwells  at  length  on  the  higher  possibilities  of  friendship, 
and  in  connection  with  this  theme  discusses  the  determination  of  social 
conditions,  the  art  of  conversation,  the  charm  of  atmosphere,  the  force  of 
love  as  a  redemptive  agency,  the  virtues  of  self-control  and  pleasant 
speech,  and  the  supreme  necessity  of  an  elevated  outlook,  in  adjusting  the 
mind  to  the  experiences  of  external  life.  In  a  concluding  chapter  the 
author  touches  upon  the  potentialities  of  the  unseen  world,  and  sets  forth 
with  contagious  earnestness  the  doctrine  that  "immortality  is  a  species  of 
conquest  in  spiritual  domain."  If,  in  the  course  of  this  discussion.  Miss 
Whiting  draws  freely  upon  the  occult  and  the  mystic,  it  must  be  confessed 
that  she  makes  effective  use  of  them  in  the  way  of  pertinent  illustration. 
—  Deacon. 

Sold  by  all  Booksellers.     Mailed,  postpaid^  by  Publishers, 

ROBERTS   BROTHERS,   Boston. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

EOUCATrON  -  PSYCHOLOGY 
LIBRARV 

This  book  is  due  on  thelast  date  stamped  below,  or 
on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subjert  to  immediate  recall. 

7  DAY  US 

E  DURIWG 

SUMME  R 

SESSIONS 

JUL  3  0  1969 

JUL  23  REC'D-J] 

' 

1 

A' 

LD  21-50m.-6.'60                         ,,   .General  J-ibrary 
(B132l8l0)476                           Universuy^of  California 

.    /     rrtf. 


U.C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


CD5THTai5fl 


383340 

IV47 


V 


■Ml 


^^^ 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA  LIBRARY 


